Easy Puff Pastry Recipe

Your hunt of finding a puff pastry recipe has landed you with one of the most descriptive and complete puff pastry recipes. Puff pastry is a flaky light pastry made from laminated dough. It is made of thin layers of dough trapped in thin layers of butter.

Puff pastry recipe is famous all over the world and is an extremely popular breakfast recipe. The first known recipe of puff pastry with butter appeared in a Spanish recipe book “Libro del arte de cozina” published in 1607. It was written by Domingo Hernández de Maceras, Head cook of The University of Salamanca.  Puff pastry can also be leavened with baker's yeast to create croissants, Danish pastry, etc.

Some of my popular breakfast recipes

• Braided Nutella Rolls
• Monkey Bread Recipe

Puff Pastry Recipe

How to bake puff pastry in oven? Making puff pastry sheets from scratch at home needs a lot of patience and effort. Puff pastry baking temperature and time technique play a vital role in making these sheets.  The puff pastry sheets must be kept at a temperature of approximately 16 °C. This temperature avoids the butter from becoming runny.

From the technique, you must let the dough rest in between folds. This allows the gluten strands to link up and retain layering.

Time for some Mathematics now. The number of layers in a puff pastry recipe is calculated with the following formula:

L=(f+1)ⁿ

Where L means a number of final layers, f means a number of folds in a single folding move and n means the total number of such moves. The perfect puff pastry considered to have 729 layers. Looks complicated? Continue reading and you will be surprised to see how easy I have made it for you.

To make puff pastry at home, you don’t need any fancy gadget. All you need a large rolling pin and a good oven. If you are confused in selecting the best oven for yourself, click on the link and help yourself.

Let’s start the puff pastry recipe

Puff pastry ingredients are easily available in any kitchen. For puff pastry dough all we need is flour, butter, salt, ice cold water, and lemon juice.

PS: I recommend using a kitchen weighing scale and always be accurate with your ingredient measurements.

And for stuffing, I will be using potatoes, peas, cumin seeds, salt, red chilli powder, green chili, dry mango powder, and oil. You should feel free when it comes to stuffing. Modify it per your taste and choice.

Quick Notes

I have curated the list of recommended tools and ingredients for baking. I recommend only tried and tested products that have given satisfactory results in my kitchen.

If you bake this recipe, please share a picture with me on my Instagram using #bakewithsonia

How to make puff pastry dough step by step

In a bowl mix flour, lemon juice, and salt. Add ice cold water and start kneading the dough. The dough should be firm just like regular chapatti dough. Cover the kneaded dough with damp cloth and let it rest for 20 minutes. This will help to develop the gluten into the dough.

On the other hand, shape the butter into a 6”x3” rectangular block. Sprinkle the butter with some flour during this process. Cover the block of butter with cling wrap and place it in the refrigerator.

After 20 minutes of resting time roll the dough into a 10”x6” rectangle.

Place the prepared butter block in the center and fold both the corners towards the center, covering the butter block completely. Cover it with cling wrap and refrigerate it for 20 minutes.

How to make puff pastry sheets

After 20 minutes, take the dough out on a lightly floured surface and using a rolling pin roll it again into a 12”x6” rectangle. Fold one side till the center. Now fold the other side and overlap it on the first side.

Make sure the edges are also overlapping each other perfectly. Again cover the dough with cling wrap and refrigerate it for another 20 minutes. Repeat the same process 3 more times.

For the final fold, take the dough on lightly dusted surface. Start rolling the dough into 12”x6” rectangle. Pull both sides together towards the center, however, do not overlap them. Overlap the two folded sides over each other to form a book. This is the final fold.

Cover it with cling wrap and refrigerate it. Our pastry sheet is ready. Now you can use these sheets immediately or can store in the freezer as well.

Let’s prepare the stuffing

Heat a pan. Add oil to it. Add cumin seeds and sauté for 1 min. Then add mashed boiled potatoes, Pease and all the dry spices. Cook for 5 minutes and switch off the flame. Transfer the prepared stuffing to a bowl and let it come to room temperature.

Let’s bake the puff pastry

Roll the prepared pastry dough into a ¼ inch thick sheet. Cut it and place the prepared stuffing. Fold and shape as per your choice.

Place them on a greased baking tray. I am using a 10”x12” baking tray.

Cover it and place it in a refrigerator for 10 minutes. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 160 °C. Now take the puffs out from the fridge and bake in preheated oven for 20 minutes or until they turn golden.

Baking time can vary depending upon the size and temperature of the oven. So bake until they turn golden and all the layers puff up.

Frozen puff pastry sheets

To get best results, rest the prepared puff pastry sheet overnight in the refrigerator. It helps to solidify butter/fat between the layers which later on helps to give crispy and flaky puffs.

You can store these puff pastry sheets in freezer up to 6 months. Once the puff pastry sheet is ready, cover it with cling wrap or zip lock pack and keep it in the freezer. Whenever you want to use, just thaw it and bake it.

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Easy puff pastry recipe

Learn to make puff pastry recipe from scratch and skip buying the ready-made store-bought puff pastries. Each delicate layer of puff pastry recipe is filled with butter that makes the flaky and buttery puff pastry.