Quickest Puff Pastry Nick Malgieri

Making classic puff pastry requires planning, time, and lots of work,but Nick Malgieri teached this somewhat less arduous process by using a food processor and a new “jelly-roll” folding method, where home cooks can now make puff pastry easily and quickly. Please do watch this video The Teacher Show before starting to make this pastry.


Nick Malgieri's time-saving adaptations worked well and the dough puffed as well as any quick puff pastry I’ve ever made. Not only that, it definitely lived up to my hopes for saving time. 


According to Nick Malgieri, to make sure that your dough comes out correctly, there are certain rules that you should follow. These rules apply not only to this Quickest Puff Pastry, but to puff pastry made by the traditional and “quick” methods, as well.


1. Before using the dough, always make sure that you chill it until it is firm. This will usually take about one hour in the refrigerator. Also, if the dough softens and becomes sticky while you are working with it, slide it onto a cookie sheet, cover it with plastic wrap, and refrigerate it until it firms up. Again, this will take about an hour. Whatever you do, do not try to work with soft puff pastry; the butter will melt, and your pastry will not puff when baked.


2. While working with the dough, flour the work surfaces and the dough often to prevent sticking, but be sure to use only a light dusting of flour each time. Adding large amounts of flour will make the dough too tough.


3 If possible, chill the dough for an hour or two after forming it into pastry shapes, but before baking. This final chilling relaxes the strands of gluten in the dough, which prevents excessive shrinkage during baking and makes for more tender pastry.


4 Make sure that puff pastry is baked all the way through before you remove it from the oven. It should be a deep golden brown on the outside, and the inside of the dough should be white, rather than grey.To check the interior, simply use the tip of a paring knife to poke a small hole to peek inside when you think the pastry is done.
 



QUICKEST PUFF PASTRY



Makes about 11⁄2 pounds of dough

Ingredients:

2 cups unbleached, all purpose flour (about 9 ounces)
20 tablespoons cold unsalted (2 sticks/8 ozs plus 1/2 stick/2 ozs) butter, cut into  ½-inch dice (4 tablespoons/1.2 stick kept separate)
1 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons cold tap water, plus a tablespoon more, if necessary (I used 7 tbsps)

Method:


1. Place flour in workbowl of food processor fitted with steel blade; add the 4 tablespoons butter; pulse until butter is absorbed, about 10 to 12 pulses of 1 second each.

2. Add remaining butter; pulse once or twice to distribute. Dissolve salt in water and add to flour mixture; pulse 3 or 4 times, until dough just starts to form a rough ball  — do not overprocess. If mixture remains very dry, add a teaspoon of water at a time and pulse again.

3. Turn dough onto floured work surface and shape into rough rectangle, then place on top of sheet of well-floured plastic wrap measuring at least 12-by-18 inches. Lightly flour top of dough and cover with another sheet of wrap. Press dough with rolling pin to flatten, then roll back and forth several times with rolling pin to
make 12-by-18-inch rectangle of dough.

4. Peel away plastic wrap and invert dough onto floured work surface, long side facing you. Peel away second piece of wrap. Fold top third of dough down and bottom third up to make 4-by-18-inch rectangle,
then  ROLL UP dough from one of the 4-inch ends. Make sure the end of the roll is under the dough. Press the roll of dough out into an approximatley 6- inch square, using the palms of your hands or a rolling pin. Wrap in plastic, and refrigerate for 1 hour, or until firm.


Notes

STORAGE: Keep the dough refrigerated and use it within 2 to 3 days. Or freeze the dough for up to a month and defrost it in the refrigerator overnight before using.

Now that i have made this pastry, i will be making Palmiers and Classic Twisted  Straws and will post them as soon as possible.  Look out for them in my next postings.