Patisserie 3.5: Puff pastry experiment

 You may recall the pear and almond cream tart from a few weeks ago, where the base was a shell of puff pastry that represented my first venture into that category of pastry. In this tart, I was disappointed that the bottom of the shell was very gummy, while the edges were flaky as expected. 

In an effort to ascertain whether the remaining 950g of the homemade puff pastry I had in the fridge was viable, I took out the 250g quarter from last time and let it thaw in the fridge overnight, with the intent of running a mini experiment on this piece of dough. I had a few different things I wanted to try on this pastry: 

• Bake a piece on its own to figure out whether the lamination itself was a failure to create layers, and thus, whether the remainder of the batch could be used in other recipes
  
• Be more gentle in rolling out, letting the dough rest if it was starting to stretch
• Keep my workstation colder and not roll out a delicate butter pastry on top of a hot dishwasher counter
• Flour my cutting board so any stretching/sticking would be an immediately obvious sign to stop rolling and let the dough rest/chill

 

It was pretty immediately obvious that this dough, having rested overnight in the fridge after freezing after its last turn, was much more relaxed and easy to work with. Nonetheless, I had to let it rest for two 10 minute intervals while I rolled it out lightly, working outwards from the center with a light layer of flour on both sides. The Book is adamant in its recommendation that the final thickness should not aim to be achieved within a single roll, and that it is much better to work slowly and gently (but not too slow, lest the dough warm!). It was notably easier to keep this dough cold, also because it was very cold in my house... I tried my best to not apply too much pressure as I rolled, and eventually, it was a stable, unstretched piece of dough about 3mm thick. I set it onto a half sheet and let it rest while I preheated the oven.

Thawed and rolled out puff pastry dough, resting in preparation for baking

Taking a hint from the chocolate puff pastry recipe in the book, I set a piece of parchment paper atop the rolled out pastry dough and weighed it down with a cooling rack to keep it flat while baking.

Baked puff pastry underneath a weighted prison grate

The pastry did still shrink a little bit; I read some tips online that say freezing or chilling before baking might help with this. The heat from the cooling rack's grid also generated a hatch pattern of browning on the finished pastry.

Not much to look at, but that's why this is a half-lesson experiment

I was encouraged by the layer formation on the ends, but then I remembered the same thing appeared on the edges of the tart last time and were not a good indication of layering within the body of the pastry. So I transferred it to the rack to cool and await a final verdict.

I wish I could just copy-paste this layer texture throughout the pastry

While cooling, the center of the pastry caved in a bit as well, which made me concerned for its interior structure.

It seems I've made a little puff pastry frisbee

I may have been a little impatient in cutting before the pastry was completely cool, which may have contributed to the centers looking still a bit gummy. However, my care with the rolling out seems to be somewhat vindicated by the visible layers in the center portions of the pastry on the top and bottom of each slice, despite there being middle gumminess. The pieces from the two ends of the pastry (top and bottom in the stack below) still had the most defined layers, but even the middle pieces had some consistent layering, laying to rest my concerns that I had failed to create a proper butter lamination at all.

The most minimalist of all Napoleons

Look at those layers! I would like to add that, while these were tasty and delightful right after baking, they seemed to become even more distinctly layered the next morning, when I scarfed one down for breakfast and was surprised to have even the "gummy" looking portions flaking apart? I broke a piece in half to investigate and was greeted by layers shearing past each other and flaking away, so maybe I should just be more patient and wait until the pastry is cool before cutting.

I made these layers! I made them! Me! Wow!

 Looks like the other 700g of my frozen puff pastry can be put to use, then. I am eyeing the Rum Napoleon from the cakes section of The Book for this. Just one more new recipe, and then I think I'm ready to move onto another section!