Soggy Bottoms: Rough Puff Pastry Is Like Classic Puff Pastry, But Easier

Welcome to Soggy Bottoms, where, lacking a tent in the British countryside, Autostraddle writers attempt to bake things inspired by The Great British Bake Off in their own homes, to varying degrees of success. This month, Maddie and Audrey made rough puff pastry.


About 90 percent of the foods they make on the Bake Off are random but extremely specific European desserts that I’ve never heard of. It’s exciting to peer into a world of carbs beyond cake, pie and things from a Pillsbury can. So when I went to visit Maddie in Philadelphia, we decided to take on one of the most consistently challenging recipes on the show: Pastry. Y’all, I’m not even sure I entirely knew what constituted a pastry until now. But I can tell you: It’s mostly butter and sweat.

Y’all, this is Maddie writing now, and I would just like to add that usually, when I’m cooking or baking, I work alone. I am not… the best… at sharing that space. Throughout this process, Audrey was very patient with me and my propensity to be a “kitchen top.”

So, minus a few moments of panic (the salt, the salt!) we came through this challenge with our selves and our friendship unscathed. But did the recipe work? Read on to find out and learn to make your own.


Ingredients

  • 3 (THREE) sticks of cold butter (24 Tbsp)
  • 2 ½ cups flour
  • ¾ cup cold water
  • ½ tsp salt

Tools

  • pastry blender
  • sharp knife
  • rolling pin (if you don’t have a rolling pin, a wine bottle without its label works JUST FINE
  • cutting board
  • saran wrap (“cling film” if you want to keep it British)

Method

Make sure your three sticks of butter are cold, then use a sharp knife to cut the butter into small (roughly ⅓ inch) cubes.

Sift the flour and butter.

Put the cubes in a pile on the cutting board, and dump all the flour on top of the butter.
Use the pastry blender to cut the butter into the flour, until you have a relatively uniform crumbly mixture of flour and butter.

Arrange the flour/butter mixture into a mound of sorts with a little divot, like a volcano with a crater at the very top. Add about a third of the cold water and mix it into the dough. Repeat the water-adding process twice more. The dough should be moist and roughly held together; however, it should not look anything like your mental image of puff pastry dough yet.

pastry_blending

Audrey used the pastry blender (also called a pastry cutter) to chop the pile of flour, butter and water into a mass. This process feels endless and useless at first, but with patience you will achieve greatness.

It’s time for your rolling pin! Or your wine bottle. Roll out the dough into a flat sheet. It won’t look smooth yet! That’s ok.

Once you have a flat sheet (it’ll still be piecey, but you’ve just gotta trust the dough that it’s gonna work out), fold it in thirds like you would if you were folding a letter.

first_turn_collage

We were not sure about the first rounds of folding. It didn’t seem like this sticky pile would ever look like food. But Maddie kept up her spirits about it.

first_turn_folded_dough

This is what we got after the first turn.

Then use your rolling pin to flatten it out again, and then fold it like a letter again.

Repeat those steps two or three times (each rotation is called, in baking terminology, a “turn”).

folded_dough

After the second turn! The flour and butter are looking more blended, and it’s getting easier to fold. Sprinkling the cutting board with flour definitely helped.

This is the process called “lamination” – it’s how the layers develop. If you were making real puff pastry, you’d be laminating a literal sheet of butter between sheets of dough, but this is ROUGH PUFF (ruff puff? rough pough?) and it’s a lot less precise and therefore it’s easier for the first-timer. Like you. Like us.

By the second or third turn, your dough should finally look like the pastry dough you’ve been imagining: a smooth and flexible sheet that doesn’t stick to anything or itself.

audrey_rolling

Maddie’s friend made us very strong cocktails at dinner so Audrey was extra pumped about this dough.

Fold it again and wrap it in saran wrap; then chill it in the fridge for half an hour. Then give it two or three more turns. After this, chill it for at least another half hour. You can use it right after the half hour, or leave it for up to three days (we left it overnight).

If you leave it for more than the half hour, you might want to let it soften up out of the fridge for a few minutes – I tried to unfold it immediately, but it broke into pieces, so I decided to leave it folded and roll it out again. That worked fine, too.

NOW YOU HAVE A ROUGH PUFF PASTRY DOUGH! AMAZING!

maddie_with_dough

A M A Z I N G

please do not forget the very important step of posing with your dough.

Please do not forget the very important step of posing with your dough.

But what are you going to do with it?

We went the savory pastry route, using this recipe as inspiration. We caramelized some thinly sliced onions and peppers and let some goat cheese get nice and soft.

IMG_0921

Caramelizing onions always takes longer than you think it should, but I promise it’s worth it.

Then we cut our pastry into eight pieces (this whole “equal pieces” thing is a combination of baking technique and geometry I have yet to master and that continues to present baking challenges to me).

We scored edges into them using a butter knife.

IMG_0920

This is after we cut off the wonkiest edges.

Then we pre-baked the pastry at 350 degrees for about 10 minutes, and then the idea was that the middle parts would “push in” and the outer edges would puff up more to make a crust…

That concept kind of worked. At any rate, we then loaded the pastries up with the onions and peppers and dolloped goat cheese on top, and then we baked them for another 20-30 minutes.

oven_tarts

The little pastries that could~

When they came out, it was the moment of truth: WOULD THE BOTTOM BE SOGGY? That is, after all, the only question that matters. It’s the “real challenge” of this whole process.

via HuffPo

via HuffPo

The verdict was…… NOT REALLY!

Overall, the bottoms were mostly crisp! They were a littttle greasy (remember how there are 3 sticks of butter in this recipe?), but the bottoms themselves were not overly soggy. The top was golden, and the dough had developed layers and puffed up!

sorry this is the only photo we took of their undersides...

Look at that crispy bottom! That’s the crispiest bottom that ever bottomed.

The inside was another story. Imagine Paul Hollywood saying, “it’s not cooked,” and you have a pretty accurate representation of what we were dealing with. Overall, I think they could have pre-baked longer, because the wet ingredients on top stopped it from being able to cook through entirely.

For a first attempt at rough puff pastry, though, I’d say we did ok. Follow this recipe at home and see what you come up with! Audrey ate one at my house and then another one on the plane and they said it held up as well as you’d expect a pastry in a ziploc bag in a backpack. My roommates inhaled them. I ate two despite severely overestimating how much butter my lactose intolerant stomach can stomach. So if those aren’t endorsements for a solid first swing at rough puff pastry… I dare you to do better.

…no but really try to make them and come report back on how it went.

finished_tarts

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Maddie

Autostraddle staff writer. Copy editor. Fledgling English muffin maker. Temporary turtle parent. Zine creator. Swings enthusiast. Political human who cares a lot about healthcare and queer anti-carceral feminisms. I asked my friend to help me write this bio and they said, "Good-natured. Friend. Earth tones." Another friend said, "Flannel babe. Vacuum lover. Kind." So. Find me on Twitter or my website.

Maddie has written 100 articles for us.

19 Comments

  1. So I dove right in and did the whole sheet of butter approach (thinking that WAS rough puff) the first time I tried making pastry dough. It went incredibly well.

    My only problem was that I was trying to bake it all up into astounding pinwheel shapes with a curried red pepper filling hidden in the middle and all of them came “unfolded” as they baked. So the presentation sucked, but they tasted amazing.

    I had hoped the smell of baking pastry would have the magical effect of summoning Sue Perkins into my apartment…no luck.

    • The struggle is real. Sometimes when I bake I kinda hope she’ll be there to make a sexual innuendo. Alas, no such luck yet.

    • Maybe she just hasn’t gotten there yet. You should probably remain at the ready for her to appear at any moment. Sometimes the Floo network just gets a little dodgy.

      • technically i’m a kitchen switch – i’m either running the show entirely, or someone else is completely in charge and i’m just standing there, like, holding a peeler as though i’ve never seen one before, until someone hands me a bowl of potatoes and tells me exactly what to do.

      • Yessssss! I always tell my current lady companions that I’m a kitchen top, except it’s more that I don’t want anyone in my space while cooking and I have a hard time sharing whatever comes of my labor in love. So…in that sense, I guess, I’m the worst top ever.

        • then i guess we share that title of worst top ever. also, i dont take criticism well even when i know it didnt turn out the best way. i dont remember who was over but they said something about the pepper and my dad whispered, “this isnt a restaurant.” i know ive told other people that but i dont remember ever saying that to him, guess word has spread.

  2. um, I saw this on tumblr and was so excited I came right over to the website and then I saw Mary Berry and GBBO references and now this post has made my day.

    Goals for next week definitely now include attempting this and finishing season 6 of GBBO.

  3. I am re-watching all the seasons of GBBO and naturally, have been baking a lot. I’ve only attempted pretty easy stuff, though. Your brave foray into pastry has inspired me! I shall attempt a pastry this weekend and report back!

  4. Ughhhhhhhh my bff and I made croissants from scratch once, wherein you do the whole butter-block-folding shebang. It took us two days because we kept having to go to class between turns. By the end we were so crabby! But we did have delicious croissants so not all bad. Verdict: never again, rough puff looks way easier!

  5. Thank you in advance for reassuring me I’m not doing badly. The worst part of trying new things is not being sure yet what doing badly would even look like.

Comments are closed.