It's good that puff pastry, on the way home from work, can be bought at any store and for dinner you can quickly bake something tasty.
But sometimes you want to treat yourself and homemade pastries with your own hands, investing your work and soul. After all, food prepared with your own hands is always tastier, because it is prepared with love. For puff pastry, few products are needed, it is based on flour, oil and salt. But the time for its preparation needs much more.
True, there are many recipes for puff pastry for a quick hand, so if you do not have free time, you can choose a faster way to cook. Fortunately, there are many options - kneading on beer, yeast, water, with the addition of sour cream or cottage cheese.
Puff pastry - product preparation
Puff pastries are always very tender. And to make it even tastier, before kneading the mass, it is necessary to sift the flour so that it is enriched with oxygen. If the dough is made according to the classical recipe, first you need to knead the water with flour, and then roll out the layers, oiling them with margarine or butter.
Recipe 1: Puff Pastry
If you make puff pastry according to all the rules, you can’t cope in five minutes. This process is not rushing. But the result justifies the investment and time spent. The secret to a good puff pastry is to roll it out correctly. The layers should absorb the oil, do not allow the dough to break when rolling, otherwise the baking will turn out not sticky, but sticky and solid. Therefore, the rolling pin does not need to be pressed hard, it must be moved smoothly so that the pieces of oil do not break out.
Ingredients: wheat flour - 500-600g, a glass of water (0.25l), salt ¼ teaspoon, butter - 350g.
Cooking method
Mix salt with flour (500g), and leave 100g on powder. Pour in water and 50 g of melted butter. Knead the dough and knead for about a minute. Then put it in a bag or wrap it in foil and put it in the refrigerator for an hour. Spread the remaining oil to a thickness of about a centimeter.
A gingerbread man from the dough from above deeply incision with a knife crosswise. Expand quarters of dough, like a flower and roll into layers, without touching the middle. It is necessary to put oil on it and cover it with rolled layers of petals, wrapping it on all sides. If the dough is not enough to cover the oil, it can be slightly stretched. Sprinkle flour on top, beat off slightly with a rolling pin and start gently rolling into a rectangle of the same thickness. Roll it in one direction. The resulting rectangular layer is folded in three, wrapped in a film and removed for an hour in a cold place. Then still do 3-4 rolling, only in a different direction. Remember to put the dough in the refrigerator after each roll.
Recipe 2: Puff Curd Dough
The main secret of preparing a good dough lies in the cottage cheese: it should be lump-free, soft, tender, but not wet. Then the products will be more layered and crumbly.
Ingredients: 300g of wheat flour, homemade soft cottage cheese - 250g, butter - 150g, salt - on the tip of a teaspoon.
Cooking method
Mix cottage cheese with butter, salt and flour. To make it easier to warm up the butter, you need to hold it in a warm place so that it becomes supple and ductile. Next, wrap the dough in a film or bag and place in the refrigerator for ripening at night or for a day. Now you can bake bagels, ears, puffs from it. Raw dough is stored for 6-7 days in the refrigerator. Or put in the freezer. And when you need to bake something, you just have to get it and defrost it.
It was a recipe for a precocious test. If you want to make the baking more layered, then the dough needs to be rolled out differently, sandwiching it not with butter, but with flour. Mix the ingredients with less flour. Roll out a thin layer, sprinkle it with plenty of flour, fold it three times and place it in the freezer for 5-10 minutes. Then roll it out again, sprinkle with flour, roll it into the freezer. In total, you need to do this 3 times. If there is no freezer, you can put it in the refrigerator for half an hour. The main thing is that the oil hardens, and the dough does not stick and rolls well.
Recipe 3: Puff Yeast Dough
Despite the fact that the dough is yeast, it is done quite quickly. Instead of fresh yeast, you can use ordinary dry yeast. For the required amount of 70 g of fresh yeast, you need to take about 23-25 g of dry.
Ingredients: wheat flour - 500g, cream margarine - 400g, sour cream - 100g, 2 egg yolks, granulated sugar - 1 tablespoon, stick of fresh yeast - 70g, ½ tsp salt, half a glass of milk.
Cooking method
Dissolve yeast with sugar in warm milk, pouring 1 tbsp. l flour. Leave the yeast in a warm place so that the yeast comes alive.
At this time, mix the flour with salt. Chop the margarine with a knife, adding flour until crumbs form. Place the mass in a wide bowl. In a bowl, mix the yolks with sour cream, pour into crumbs, continuing to chop with a knife. Add yeast yeast and knead the dough. It should be soft enough, at the same time not stick to your hands. You can add a little more flour if necessary. Then chop the dough with a knife and then you can proceed to the molding of products and bake cake cakes, bagels, cookies. Or, having rolled into a ball and wrapped in a film, put in the refrigerator.
Recipe 4: Puff Pastry on Beer
Products from this test are tender and fragile. They themselves melt in the mouth. You can make sticks, cookies, cakes, bagels. The highlight of the recipe is the moment at which the flour is not mixed with cold margarine, but with hot melted, the dough is as if brewed.
Ingredients: 250g margarine, 4 cups of wheat flour, half a glass of light beer.
Cooking method
Melt margarine until hot and pour into flour. Stir, add beer. First, you can mix with a spoon, and then thoroughly knead the mass with your hands. Roll the bun, flatten it and place it in the freezer, wrapping it with a bag or film.
Defrost the frozen dough, roll it thinly, and try to make a rectangle. Then fold in three - put one end, going beyond the middle and cover with the other end. Fold the resulting folded strip again to form a square, thinly roll and cut out the desired shape, bake until light golden.
Puff pastry - tips from experienced chefs
To make puff pastry more convenient to roll out, instead of rolling, you can use a bottle of wine filled with cold water.
The baking sheet before baking is not lubricated with oil, but moistened with cold water. Dough is always placed only in a well-heated oven.
