Puff Pastry

Ingredients

• 5 cups bread flour
• 2.5 tsp salt
• 2 cups water
• 2 cups unsalted butter, softened

Method

Puff pastry is an exercise in lamination: you're building hundreds of paper-thin layers of butter separated by dough, and steam — not the butter itself — is what forces the rise. Every fold doubles your layer count, so six folds give you 729 layers. The butter must stay cold and discrete; the dough must stay supple enough to roll without tearing. Get either wrong and you'll bake a greasy, dense sheet rather than pastry that shatters.

Start with the detrempe (the dough base). Combine 500g bread flour and 5g salt in a bowl. Add 500ml cold water gradually, mixing until the dough is shaggy but cohesive — not sticky, not dry. It should ball up and feel slightly tacky when you press it. Rest it covered for at least 10 minutes; this hydrates the flour and relaxes the gluten so rolling doesn't snap the strands. Meanwhile, beat 500g cold unsalted butter between two layers of cling film with a rolling pin until it forms a flexible slab roughly 15mm thick. It needs to match the dough's temperature and pliability — too cold and it shatters during rolling; too warm and it bleeds into the dough.

On a lightly floured surface, roll the detrempe into a rectangle roughly 30cm by 40cm and 6mm thick. Lay the butter slab in the centre lengthways, then fold the dough over it like an envelope, sealing all edges by pressing down firmly with the heel of your hand. This is the butter lock-in — if butter escapes, you've lost layers. Roll the parcel away from you to a rectangle roughly 20cm by 60cm and 6mm thick. The butter will feel uneven under your pin; keep rolling through it. Fold into thirds: fold the top third down, then the bottom third up and over. This is your first folding turn. Mark the dough with one fingertip pressed into the corner — you're tracking turns. Wrap in cling film and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Repeat the rolling and three-fold process four more times (six turns total), refrigerating for 30 minutes between each turn. After the final turn, refrigerate overnight or freeze for up to a month. When you're ready to use it, roll to roughly 3mm thick and score a shallow line 1cm from the edges — this rim won't rise because you're sealing it, so when steam lifts the interior, this frame stays put. Bake at 200°C on a heavy baking tray until the pastry is deep golden and a knife slid horizontally through the side meets no resistance. Around 20–25 minutes. The sound it makes — a crisp crackle, not a soft thud — tells you the layers are set.