Today’s Recipe
As I’m sure you know, pastries are a huge part of Danish and Scandinavian baking. However, the types of pastries you likely most associate with Scandinavia, like cinnamon and cardamom buns, are typically made with either Danish pastry dough or regular yeasted dough. We have posted many a recipe with these types of dough, true. But there is another one that we have not yet officially posted on our blog – puff pastry! We have used it in our asparagus tart recipe, but this is its official moment in the limelight. This is a rough puff pastry recipe, which is a bit easier to handle but still turns out beautifully flaky and buttery. It’s the perfect base for a tart or pastry. Keep reading to make the best puff pastry that is sure to impress, both in taste and appearance.
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Mastering Rough Puff Pastry
You may be thinking that puff pastry is a challenging pastry to make. However, with a few tips and tricks up your sleeve, you’ll be an expert in no time. First of all, keep your ingredients cold. This ensures that the butter does not melt into the flour, which could prevent you from getting the layers that are so coveted in puff pastry. The same goes for later on in the process, when you’re rolling the dough out to create layers. Try not to spend too long handling the dough with warm hands! Generally speaking, if it’s the dough is hard to work with, it’s best to let it rest – either 5 minutes at room temperature, or if it needs longer, pop it back in the fridge for 30 minutes or so. The goal is to not overwork the dough! The final tip is to trust the process! At times, the dough may seem too crumbly, but continue to follow the recipe and it will come together nicely.
Measuring Precisely
As is essential with any baking recipe, you should make sure you’re measuring accurately when making this recipe. We always use scales to measure our ingredients, so we would recommend that you do the same at home. You can get a very cheap and easy-to-use one from Amazon*. If you prefer using cup measurements, there are a few rules you must follow. When measuring flour, make sure the flour is fluffed up before you dip the cup into it and not packed into the cup. This is different from when you measure an ingredient like brown sugar, which must be packed into the cup. Then, for flour (and many other dry ingredients), you should use a palette knife or the straight end of a utensil (like the stem of a spoon or fork) to level the flour off and get rid of any extra. This will give you a reasonably accurate measurement, but please do remember – measuring by weight is the most accurate way to bake!
Ingredients and Instructions
For this rough puff pastry dough, which we have adapted from Sally’s Baking Blog’s recipe, you’ll need very simple ingredients: butter, flour, salt, and ice water. As mentioned before, do keep the ingredients as cold as possible. Start by adding the flour and salt to a bowl, then add the cubed butter. Using your hands, press the cubes of butter into flatter pieces, but try to keep them large. Add ice water one tablespoon at a time until the dough roughly comes together. Turn this dough out onto a work surface and start creating your layers. This is best understood with photos to help you envision the process, so read the recipe below carefully before you begin rolling out and folding the dough. You should then refrigerate your dough for 30 minutes (or up to 24 hours) before rolling it out for the pastry or tart that you want to make.
Quick and Easy Fruit Pastries
We decided to demo how to use this pastry dough in a sweet setting, as we’ve made a few savory recipes with this dough, but haven’t shown anything sweet yet. This isn’t so much a fully written out recipe as it is a quick guideline for how to use this puff pastry to make incredibly easy fruit pastries!
We made two different toppings for these square fruit pastries:
Orange Coconut
- Ricotta topping (a few tablespoons of ricotta for each pastry that you’re filing, mixed with sugar and vanilla to taste)
- Orange slices
- Coconut flakes
- Demarara/turbinado sugar sprinkled on top
Blackberry
- Ricotta topping (a few tablespoons of ricotta for each pastry that you’re filing, mixed with sugar and vanilla to taste)
- Blackberry jam (you can use any jam you have on hand!)
- Demarara/turbinado sugar sprinkled on top
These ingredients are super flexible – you can use marzipan as a filling instead, substitute the ricotta for some cream cheese for a bit of extra tanginess, or use up some leftover pastry cream! Top with any fresh fruit or jam that you like – sliced peaches would be amazing leading into summer!
Instructions
All you do is roll out the dough to about 1/8″ in thickness, measuring about 8″ by 16″. Then, cut into 8 equal squares.
Dollop the ricotta mixture into the center of each square, leaving about a 1″ border around the edges. Add your orange slices/coconut flakes on top, or add a hefty dollop of jam on top of the ricotta. Then, egg wash the edges of the pastry and fold them up, leaving a half inch border around the edges.
You may have to cut the corners diagonally to get them to fold a little easier. Then, egg wash the top of the border and sprinkle sugar over the pastry.
Place on a baking sheet and bake in a 400F (205C) oven for 15-20 minutes, until the edges are nice and golden brown and puffed up. Enjoy!!
The full pastry recipe is below – let us know if you try it out by leaving a comment or tagging us on social media!
Watch Our Video
Check out our demo on how to make this pastry dough! Including the fruit pastries!
Rough Puff Pastry
Ingredients
ROUGH PUFF PASTRY
- 113 grams unsalted butter *the butter needs to be cold
- 120 grams all purpose flour
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 3-5 tbsp ice water
Instructions
- Make the rough puff pastry at least 2.5 to 3 hours ahead of time for whichever recipe you are using it for; start by combining flour and salt in a bowl.
- Cube the butter and add it to the bowl with the flour and salt.
- Gently press the butter together between your fingers to create flat pieces; you want to keep the butter pieces relatively large at this point! We do recommend doing this by hand to avoid the butter getting mixed too finely into the flour.
- Add ice water, starting with three tablespoons, and start pressing the mixture together until if forms a very shaggy dough that just barely holds together. Add more water if needed a tablespoon at a time, but do not add too much; it's okay if it doesn't hold together perfectly at this stage!
- Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and press into a rough rectangle.
- Roll out until it is 12" long (width doesn't matter as much, but around 6 inches wide is fine).
- Create a letter fold by folding down the bottom third of the dough over the middle third;
- Then fold the top of the dough over the bottom and middle.
- Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 2 hours.
- After the dough has rested in the fridge, roll the dough out on a floured surface to about a 6" x 12" rectangle. You should turn the dough 90 degrees from how you rolled it out the first time (basically, roll out the long edge to be the longest edge of the rectangle!)
- Make another letter fold by repeating the same process, folding the bottom over the middle, then the top over the bottom.
- Turn the dough 90 degrees and repeat the rolling to 6" by 12" rectangle, then repeat the letter fold.
- Do this folding process two more times; you should have completed 5 total letter folds at this stage.
- If the dough is ever getting tough to work with, you can wrap it up and let it rest for 30 minutes in the fridge before continuing.
- After the last fold, wrap the dough and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes; you can also keep it in the fridge for up to 24 hours.
- After the dough has rested, you can roll it out into whatever shape you need it to be for whichever recipe you are using! Check out the fruit pastry recipe for a super easy treat we included right above this recipe section!
