March 22, 2016 - 5:13am
Pastry sheet making at home, please guide
Hello, recently I tried to make filo pastry/ puff pastry sheets at home and tried with margarine and butter and they came out ok. I see these small unorganized bakeries near my house and they make stuffed puff pastry. To save cost I am sure they do not use butter ad also when I eat them, I cannot taste butter. I too want to try at home the same procedure but have no idea what they use. Can I try to make puff pastry sheets with oil, will it work. Pleas guide as to what all I can use Thanx
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You can make a form of puff pastry using sheets of ready made filo pastry. You layer them up and brush melted butter between the layers then roll them round your filling of choice. This is a different beast from puff pastry which is rolled layers of laminated pastry and butter. Do use butter. Pastry just isn't right with oils or margarines.
Puff pastry is tricky to make, but the up-side is that if you get good at it, then you'll also be good at making croissants. It involves laminating butter into the pastry dough.
Watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdO_ef0dyuM
it's a good intro to puff pastry.
-Gordon
A lot of bakeries use margarine-like compounds formulated for bulk production.The taste is not the same as using butter and many of the products are high in trans-fats if that is a concern. These products are only available in large quantities as far as I know.
Hi Uziel,
Making puff from fillo is not really an option. What you would be making is just layers of fillo. The fillo pastry is a much drier dough than the dough part of puff. In puff The layers have to seperate during the cooking process. The fat used in commercial puff is blended oil or fat which is more stable at a certain temp whereas butter will vary much more with handling, rolling, folding etc. So if you use butter you have to rest the pastry between each fold to harden the butter.