Making quality flaky dough or pâte feuilletée at home requires time, patience and technical skills. You can now find very good quality flaky dough in supermarkets nowadays and often your local pâtisserie can provide and sell you a piece to make your pies, tart and quiches. However, I recently discovered a recipe for a very good substitute to flaky pastry. I used it to make Vol-au-vent, an old french classic recipe using flaky pastry with a bechamel sauce and it worked beautifully. The secret is to buy the best quality butter you can find. Local butters contain a lot of water and use 80% – 82% fat content which, once in the oven release a lot of water, preventing the dough to rise. For this kind of baking, I use European-style butter with a 84% milk fat content with very good results. Give it a try !
INGREDIENTS
FOR 500 GRAMS OF FLAKY DOUGH
180 Gr. very cold butter
225 Gr. All purpose flour
4 Gr. Salt
110 Gr. Very cold water
METHOD
Place the butter and the flour in the fridge for at least an hour before you start and ensure the butter is very cold.
Cut the butter in 2cm squares and place it in the bowl of your stand mixer, add the flour and salt and mix a few seconds. Rapidly add the cold water and mix for a few seconds so all the ingredients hold together. The key is not to overmix as you want to see butter pieces in your dough.
Pour the dough on a working surface sprinkled with a little flour and roll out the dough in a rectangle shape with a 5mm thickness.
Fold the dough in 3 – like an enveloppe, cover it with cling film and place it in the freezer for 10 minutes.
Turn the dough and roll it out again in a rectangular shape with 5mm thickness. Freeze for 10 minutes.
Roll the dough for a 3rd time and again, freeze it for 10-15 minutes.
After that period, your dough is ready for use. Roll it out to approximately 3mm thick and use it to make tarts, quiches etc…
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