Making puff pastry

Appears in

By Shaun Hill

Published 2000

  • About

Mix together all the ingredients except the chilled butter to make a dough. Then roll the dough out to a cross shape (St George rather than St Andrew) 0.5cm (¼in) thick.

Between two sheets of plastic wrap, roll the block of chilled butter into a square so that it fits neatly into the centre of the pastry cross you have made. Fold over all the flaps of pastry to enclose the butter, creating a pastry parcel.
You will then need to complete four ‘book turns’ with an interval between each for the pastry to rest. A book turn is done this way: roll the pastry out into a long strip like a stair carpet, fold each end into the middle of the strip, then close the newly formed ends like a book. There will be four layers of pastry. Put the pastry to rest in the fridge and repeat the rolling, turning and resting process three times.