Homemade Puff Pastry
(to lift you from the lower points of quarantine and bring you boundless joy)
1-1/4 C all purpose flour
1/4 t. kosher or sea salt
1/2 cup + 5 T. unsalted cold butter
6-8 t. very cold water
Combine the flour and the salt. Using a cheese grater, grate the very cold butter into the flour and salt mixture. With dry hands, mix and combine the butter into the flour mixture until you get coarse crumbles. Spritz or add in the cold water one tablespoon at a time, adding just enough water so that the dough holds together. Try to touch the dough as little as possible. Assemble it quickly into a ball. Turn the ball out on the counter, and using the base of your palm, smear it forward on the counter. Flip it over, and smear it forward again. This distributes the fat a bit more fairly. Quickly wrap the dough in parchment, and chill in the refrigerator for 1 hour.
After an hour has passed, lightly flour your counter and turn the dough out. Roll it into a rectangle, roughly 12” x 8”, and about 1/2” thick. Then, fold the dough in thirds, and roll it again. Fold into thirds a second time, and roll it again. Fold into thirds as many as five times, rolling after each time you fold. Wrap again in parchment and refrigerate for another hour.
After this second hour, you may choose to roll and fold another series of times. Or, you can move onto filling and baking the pastry.
I rolled it and folded six times, and then filled it with sauteed spring vegetables (carrot, celery, green garlic, onion), herbed sausage (fennel, garlic, and thyme) and lemon bechamel, baked at 375 F for about 40 minutes. That was last night’s dinner, accompanied by a spinach salad with green apple dressing. Face-meltingly good.
Then, with the trimmings of the pastry from last night’s pie, which I refrigerated overnight last night, I made a breakfast pastry with cheddar cheese, homemade smoked ham, and leftover lemon bechamel. I wanted to cry, sing, swoon. It was so good. It was poetry. I probably won’t make it through quarantine without doing this again.