Puff the Magic Pastry - Recap

Wearing sunglasses and leather, Alton employs a montage of images and a background chorus in a song that similar to an Isaac Hayes blaxploitation classic. In this way Alton introduces the puff pastry and declaims its virtues and versatility.

Working with puff pastry, the cook starts with something very thin and very flat and ends with something puffy and delicious. Puff pastry owes its properties to a layered structure of alternating dough and butter, a kind of pastry plywood. At the Atlanta Art Institute School of Culinary Arts chef Michael McCurdy demonstrates. He rolls dough out very thinly and then sets a slab of butter on top. That gets tri-folded much like a business letter and run through rollers. Each fold triples the number of layers, which is helpful, since many, many layers are required.

Back at his kitchen Alton asks rhetorically if one might make this sort of dough at home. The answer is yes, but it takes several hours, a large and cold working surface and the arms of a channel swimmer. One must be prepared to convert three layers into hundreds or thousands of very thin layers. Since Alton isn’t a jock, lacks a cold work surface and has never been friendly with the clock, he chooses to purchase pre-made puff pastry at the store.

A few stores sell puff pastry as sheets, but most of them sell it in a kind of tri-fold. Alton removes one from the package and unfolds it and – oops! It breaks into several pieces. That can be repaired, but Alton starts over demonstration the right way to thaw the pastry. Condensation is deadly so Alton lays out a towel and gently covers the pastry, leaving it to sit for fifteen to twenty minutes. Then he gently peels back the layers, stopping immediately if they don’t want to open. If force is required to open the pastry it has not finished thawing. Alton’s pastry unfolds only halfway, so he props the two sheets together forming a kind of pyramid and lets it continue thawing.

Meanwhile, he considers his surroundings. If the temperature rises above 80° the butter will melt and the pastry won’t puff. As insurance, Alton slides a half sheet pan into the freezer for a few minutes. If the dough starts to wilt he’ll lay some parchment on top and set the cold pan on that. In about thirty seconds the dough will firm back up. The same trick works if the phone rings, or nature calls, or anything else interrupts the preparation.

Alton’s pastry unfolds now, but it still has seams where the folds were. To remove these Alton uses his knuckles to crimp the pastry together forming a kind of “serration” from the knuckle marks. At this point condensation has dampened the dough so Alton dusts it with some sugar – the right choice when the final product will be sweet. For a savory pastry Alton recommends flour. Once he’s dusted the dough he rolls it lightly to seam the seams. If the dough slides, that’s good – it means the dough hasn’t stuck to the counter and is still workable.

Tarts come in all shapes and sizes, including circular. Alton uses a pair of bowls to get the right diameter, then introduces another rule of puff pastry – the cut must be sharp. If the cut mashes the pastry the layers will stick together and the pastry will not rise. For the sharpest cuts a round bladed pizza cutter works well. The pastry could go in the oven at this temperature but Alton knows rolling the seams out activated the gluten and the dough should rest.

While it does Alton discusses fruit. What he really needs is a Granny Smith apple; a friend offstage tosses on in. No, what he really needs is a cored apple; he tosses the apple back and it is returned cored. Still unsatisfied, Alton returns the apple twice more, to be peeled and then quartered. All that done, the apple must be sliced “wafer thin.” This, Alton claims, takes practice for the layman; professionals can do it easily. Then the view expands to show how Alton really cuts those wafer thin apples – a vegetable peeler. For apples and similar fruit, the peeler does the job easily. Slices this thin will brown quickly; the many broken cells will release enzymes. The answer it to slide them into acidulated water; a tablespoon or so of lemon juice in a cup of water does the job. Or one might use Vitamin C!

Alton retrieves his pastry from the fridge and imparts another pastry law: flip puff pastry so the bottom faces up. The bottom of the pastry suffered the least from rolling and cutting because it was close to the board. It will rise better than the top layers, maximizing the “puff potential.” The dough under the fruit shouldn’t puff up so much; to discourage this, Alton uses a fork to dock the pastry. Docking involves making several small holes (they need not go completely through) that permit steam to escape, discouraging puffing. Since the edges should puff, Alton keeps his fork well clear of them.

Sugar melts and sticks, so Alton slides a piece of parchment between the baking sheet and the dough, then sprinkles on more sugar and lays apple slices in the middle. He uses a kind of interlocking spiral, the slides the tarts into the middle of a 400° oven. That, he says, is the magic puff pastry temperature. It produces puffed, golden and delicious dough. These tarts will bake in fifteen to twenty minutes. When he removes them, Alton gently presses on the dough. If it yields the pastry must bake longer.

To get that “new tart shine” Alton melts apricot jelly for about thirty seconds in the microwave, just long enough to loosen it up. With a brush he dabs the jelly onto the hot pastry. The apples haven’t set, so Alton avoids brushing that could dislodge them. When the glaze is on Alton lets the pastries cool to room temperature and slides them into a bag to store at room temperature. He eats them that way, or slides them into the microwave for a bit and then tops them with ice cream.

Moving on, Alton next discusses a stacked pastry. He builds this by cutting and stacking the pastry dough. Using a ruler and a sharp knife he cuts strips from all sides of a piece of puff pastry. To stack these he needs glue, and the best choice is an egg wash: egg mixed with a little water. Alton dabs that on, staying at least a quarter inch from the cut edge – the wash will glue the layers together if it touches them. Then he stacks the long walls on the sides, the shorter walls at the top and bottom, and folds over any excess. Each place where two sheets of dough stack gets a dab of egg wash to adhere the pieces. He measures for the roof – in this case seven inches square – before sliding the floor and walls into the fridge.

Alton cuts a roof that’s just a little larger than the seven square inch base. The filling will generate a lot of steam, and that needs a way to escape, so Alton gently folds the roof in half and then cuts gashes into the folded edge. When he unfolds the roof, these gashes pierce it in the middle without damaging the edges. The roof done, Alton slides it into the fridge and considers the filling.

A nice frame, Alton offers, can sometimes save cheap art. In this case the puff pastry is the nice frame, while some canned cherry pie filling is the cheap art. Ah, well, Alton sighs... we can’t all be Martha Stewart! Thunder rumbles at that remark... Alton starts by draining the cherries thoroughly so they do not weep water into the pastry. Then he shakes on some bread or cake crumbs; these add texture and soak up additional moisture.

After about ten minutes Alton spoons this filling into the middle of the base. Keeping in mind the walls will rise quite a bit, Alton recommends adding more filling than appears necessary. With the filling in place Alton retrieves the roof and uses a little egg wash “glue” to set it on top. The extra size helps here, allowing the roof to cover the mound of filling. Egg wash on the top of the roof will give it a nice glaze, but Alton reminds viewers again to avoid the edges lest the wash seal the layers and discourage rising. That goes into a 400º oven for a half hour – enough time to puff but not enough to cook through. Alton finishes cooking the pastry at 300º for another half hour or so.

For his last puff pastry offering Alton shares a stuffed pastry recipe. This sort is Alton’s favorite. It encompasses turnovers, fritters and similar confections, sweet as well as savory. Stuffed pastry has origins back to the Middle Ages, when cooks lacked refrigeration so they made something called huff pastry, essentially shoving ingredients into a pocket of dough and sealing them in juices and all. To a degree this kept germs out and somewhat extended the life of the food. Alton prefers to rely on the refrigerator for food preservation, but allows that the descendants of these pastries still have uses.

Checking the chill chest, Alton finds some leftover rice from a takeout order, along with sautéed mushrooms, pickle relish, green onions and parsley. He mixes all that in a bowl with some salt and a few grinds of pepper and then decides it needs something else. Going to the pantry, he considers and rejects tomato soup before settling on salmon! Mixing that in, he has created koulebyaka, a Russian dish containing exactly these ingredients. But many combinations of leftovers work well.

Filling mixed, Alton cuts a single sheet of thawed puff pastry into rough quarters. He dishes filling into the middle and egg wash “glue” on the edges, then folds the pastry over the create triangles, crimping these together with a fork. The filling will steam, so a few well places gashes in the top of the pastry prevent ballooning. And once again, into the oven at the magic puff pastry temperature, 400º, for half an hour.

Alton’s moral? Take care of the puff, and it will take care of you. Stick to the plan: keep it cold, thaw it correctly and work it when it is cool and firm. Use a cold pan to firm loose pastry when needed. Use sharp tools to cut, and dock the bases to keep them from puffing too much. Gash open tops to allow filling steam a way out. Rest the pastry before baking it, and when baking, watch the oven for hot or cold spots – spin the pan if necessary to ensure even baking. Follow these tips and your puff pastry will be Good Eats!

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