I meant to ask you: Have you made a video about puff pastry?
There is a lot of it on YouTube, but there are many discrepancies and differences of opinion; Mrs BB and I found your video on chocolate mousse very inspiring.
My pastries are always good, except puff which ALWAYS defeats me ... apart from anything else I find that, after the third turn, if working straight from the fridge, the parcel becomes incredible stiff and tough to roll; but if I wait a bit, some butter tends to seep through the flour.
Recently, I saw that in America they add a bit of flour to the beurrage; do you have an opinion on that? Also, do you recommend strong or ordinary plain flour? Do you recommend ordinary butter, or strong Normandy butter?
Looking forward.
yes people didn't believe I do it so fast. Thats because they follow the followers.
I pound the butter with flour, just to prevent the baton from sticking to the butter, I don't intentionally mix flour and butter, you can but the flour will warm the butter so best not.
So i made videos where I start with ingredients on the table, no editing, no 15 min stop or chilling the dough between folds.
It takes less than 25 minutes from start to complete 1200+ layers.
A blend of strong and weak flour makes a big difference in the final product, if you don't weaken the flour the baked dough will be brittle and hard . I like 60% bread flour and 40% cake flour.
I buy cheap uns butter, fancy isn't necessary, food snobbery ruins many a baker.
An infra red temp gun is your friend, butter melts at 80F+ so if you keep the temp of the dough appreciably lower there is no danger of melting , chilling between folds would have a counter effect and set you back.
In a 70F kitchen, using cold tap water, the final dough temp is quite cool 65F I recall.
64F butter cannot melt. The dough will relax faster at those temps compared to chilling it.
This video is for reverse puff, the butter is on the outside, its a bit more finicky to get going but once you have 2 folds its the same as regular puff, reverse has benefits over regular puff, you can do it either way with the same recipe, regular puff would be easier for you to start off. Either way, pay attention to timing and temperatures, don't make the dough too dry or you'll have a hard job rolling it, soft and supple but not sticky and pay attention to how long I mix it, don't mix into a smooth bread type dough.
Avoid kneading the dough, just mix it together to a cogent type pie dough....2 minutes on the machine on slow.
PS. I was born and raised in Manchester, UK.
