Needless to say, I was absolutely amazed at the result! First of all, it was a lot easier to make than I had imagined. By easy I’m talking about 10 minutes of easiness (plus 20 minutes time to cool/harden in fridge) without needing to use the food processor or dough hook on my electric mixer. Everything was by hand, and it was dead simple! And the cooked result? Delicious! It produced a crunchy, slightly flaky pastry that complimented my shredded mushy chicken pie filling well. But what I was most impressed with was that it wasn’t as greasy or fatty as store-bought puff pastry. It’s a complete winner in my books, and I wholeheartedly recommend that you try making it instead of buying puff pastry in the future!
Puff Pastry
Ingredients
- 250g plain flour (patentbloem)
- 1 tsp fine sea salt
- 250g butter at room temperature, but not soft
- 150ml cold water
Instructions
- Sift the flour and salt into a large bowl.
- Using your fingers, rub/break up the the butter into the flour until its in small pieces. You don’t want the butter completely incorporated into the flour, you want the small pieces of butter to remain intact and visible.
- Pour in a little bit of the cold water and mix until you have a firm rough dough. Add extra water if necessary.
- Turn out onto a lightly floured board, and roll out into the required thickness and shape. Make sure that you don’t overwork the pastry and that the streaks of butter remain visible in a sort of marble effect. To keep the dough from sticking to the bench or your rolling pin, ensure you are generous with your flour.
- To transfer the pastry to your pie dish, dust it generously with flour before folding it in half and in half again. Pick it up and place it into the dish and unfold it until it covers the dish. Push it in gently to line the dish fully.
