"Huffed and puffed" pastry has been featuring on my list of to do's for rather a long time and with recent dips in one's recovery just passed, I thought it timely to celebrate with this ground breaking recipe. Or was is? I followed the Larousse recipe for "Puff Pastry with oil" to the letter, save that I made a minor flour substitution...... you know, to accommodate said intolerances.
I'm not quite convinced with the oil situation as after all (my limited understanding of pastry speaks here), isn't it the water in the layers of cold butter trapped in layers of dough which turns into steam when hit by heat which in turn makes a pastry huffed and puffed? No cold butter, no puffing then? An absolutely undeniably resounding no - the "croissant" did no puffing whatsoever and infact was hard enough to break one's resolve to continue, not to mention one's teeth... Yes, it is also rather tragically shaped:
The tragedy was re-enacted with pure sunflower oil which, if you are quite familiar with, isn't as solid as cold butter, resulting in a very soft dough which is terribly difficult to roll and fold, roll and fold, etc. sufficiently.
Unsatisfied, a third batch was made in which the fat element was substituted with coconut oil from the fridge instead, hoping for the third time lucky charm.
Well, some sort of pastry (and I use the term here rather loosely) came out from the oven but looks nothing like puff. The second recipe seemed to work best for the other half, who was pretty clear that whatever it was, t'wasn't croissant...
Third on the left, second in the middle, first on the right...and back to the drawing board. I'll keep you posted (ha!)
No comments:
Post a Comment