Flaky Olive Oil (Laminated?) Pastry
Hello fellow bakers, it's been a long time! I'd even forgotten my account/login details. I just wanted to post about some recent pastry experiments and discuss the technique with more experienced bakers who understand the sciences and arts behind things.
Below: Rustic apple pie made with flour, yogurt, vegetable oil*, and sugar.
I've always loved pastry. The pie crusts, to me, are the best part of the pie! However, time and time again my pastries always had problems and always failed. Part of the reason was that the high amount of solid fat was not only arguably unhealthy and but also costly in my part of the world. Therefore, the search for the perfect oil-based pastry crust was there, and I while I don't think I've finished experimenting or "found" the veritable Fountain of Life, I stumbled on a technique by which oil can be used to create a flaky and laminated pastry, as explained in the video below.
The oil/water dough method (Chinese flaky pastry: http://www.recipies.50webs.com/Huaiyang%20chinese%20pastry%20.htm) had always been staring me in the face, but I didn't think it was the secret to apple pies, quiches and turnovers. To me, it was used for roti pratas, dimsum pastries and lard balls. But, anyway, on a whim, I just tried the Chinese pastry method with olive oil to make minced-meat turnovers, and it was fantastic, truly. The taste and texture was comparable to my previous experimented with shortcrust (butter) and hot-water crust (lard) pastries, so much so that I didn't miss the solid fat. I handled the layers to the point I was satisfied with, somewhere in-between shortcrust and puff pastry, and which the dough doesn't behave like butter-based pastry, it bakes beautifully and tastes splendid.
I am writing to find out if anyone has experimented or tried making oil-based or Asian-style pastries, and what their results have been. I would be curious to know if this recipe and method works. This is my go-to pastry now, (with some variation) for chocolate tarts (above), turnovers, pot pies (below), quiches, etc. The example below is rather curious because I tried adding a small amount of yeast to the water-based dough (dough 1) to create a lift, which made the layers very, very crispy and flaky with air-bubbles in-between.
I feel like it's a personal baking breakthrough for me, and it makes me so happy because the "code" to oil-based pastries has been, in way, "cracked". And it can be vegan or vegetarian, and there are only three basic ingredients. I did notice that most vegan recipes simply used "vegan butter" or other solidified versions of vegetable oils.
Below: I'm not a photographer, to excuse my smartphone-quality snaps ;)
Comments
That is a very interesting technique for laminating dough. I have no experience with this technique, so I can't help you there. I have heard before of substituting oil for butter/shortening in pie pastry and biscuits. I have tried that, but it is definitely a different texture with less flakiness. It would be interesting to try your laminating method to see if that improves the texture. Also, using yeast in pie dough is not common, but not unheard of. I've never tried it, but I have seen recipes for it. And since yeast is used in laminated doughs like croissants and danish pastries, I can see how that it would help with your recipe too.
A Danish pastry made with oil sounds like an interesting new challenge as well
Came across your thread linked by KathyF.
I haven't experienced this exact technique, but in the last year I came across a blog post that completely changed my ideas about pastry/lamination. http://www.seriouseats.com/2015/03/science-of-pie-7-myths-that-need-to-go-away.html It deals mostly with pie crust but I've also done it with laminated bread. The two main ideas I wanted to point out are that 1. pastry ultimately requires a differential in the gluten between one layer and the next, and 2. fat/oil mixed with flour behaves the same as solid fat.
So while I'm not an experienced pastry chef, my answer is yes, I imagine the "Asian" method does work. Not sure about the exact recipe - I just watched the video.
The two layers that Kenji speaks of are in this method two separate "doughs". Both have oil. However one develops gluten, while the other develops no gluten as it has no water - I think of it as more of a roux in my head than a dough (fat+flour suspension). The "envelope" of dough around the second dough and also the letter folding are similar to what tradition demands of puff pastry, albeit less strict.
In my much less civilised/informed kitchen, I use Kenji's method for pie crusts. My two layers are an oil-flour roux, and then just plain flour that gets gluten by being the first to be hit with water when I add it. When I pour the water into the bowl and gently combine, the gluten develops in the last-added flour and not in the oil roux, creating the gluten differential. When it's a partially cohesive ball, I dump the whole mix on the counter and roll out/letterfold. It's much faster and less fussy than the traditional rub-butter-into-flour-but-leave-big-bits method and has the added bonus of letting me use oil instead of butter.. or less of it :)
Hope that helped.
(EDIT, deleted bunches of ramble)
Thanks for sharing this. That sounds like a brilliant new pastry recipe. What you mentioned about the gluten is really enlightening - puts into words what I'm trying to discover and express.
Also, yes, the other dough is totally like a roux. That's the perfect term for it! It's that in Asia the direct translation is water dough/oil dough.