Sweet Puff Pastry Recipes (2024)

FAQs

What desserts can be made from puff pastry? ›

Always preheat your oven for a minimum of 15-20 minutes before baking, because Puff Pastry depends on even heat to rise and puff. Place pastries 1 inch apart. If you want a flaky thin and crispy pastry that's not very puffy, prick the unbaked Puff Pastry all over with a fork, which lets steam escape while baking.

While this results in a very light and delicate product, it is often time-consuming and labor-intensive. Rough puff pastry is prepared by incorporating butter or fat in the form of golf-ball size chunks into the dough, instead of the entire slabs used in classic puff pastry.

You see, when the butter melts in the oven, it creates steam and that steam separates the dough into multiple flaky layers. Cold butter is what makes cheddar biscuits and scones flakey too!

Heat is the enemy of Puff Pastry—it handles best when cold. So avoid working with it on hot, humid days, in a stifling hot kitchen or next to your oven.

Adding an acid, the theory goes, stops the gluten in its tracks and rescues the crust from toughness. These same acid enthusiasts claim that stopping or at least hindering the gluten makes the dough easier to roll out, and may even prevent it from shrinking as it bakes.

Egg wash is the most reliable but it can be very thick and sticky. Milk wash will go on more evenly but it can soak into pastry and make it weaker. Melted butter works nicely after the crust has set but it can make the crust greasy and weaker.

The main differences between puff pastry and phyllo dough are their fat content and preparation. Puff pastry is a laminated dough that gets its signature airy puff from layers of butter, while phyllo dough is comparatively low-fat. Phyllo dough is mostly flour and water and can dry out easily.

Puff pastry does need some gluten development but, because of the amount of rolling out that will happen during lamination, it is very easy to overwork a dough which makes it incredibly hard to use and can cause a lot of shrinkage.

What can go wrong with rough puff pastry? ›

Problem: Your Pastry is Hard and Tough

You've added too much water to the flour but not enough fat. It is important to keep the pastry cool during rolling and the oven needs to be hot.

I normally use my traditional pie crust with this filling (sometimes with brown butter) but I HAD to try it with puff pastry. Turns out, it's amazing. The high butter content in puff pastry makes this crust melt in your mouth. Not to mention, I think it's stunning.

Once forced apart, the fat in the butter or lard cooks each layer of pastry giving the flake. If you open the oven during this process, the puff will deflate and flatten again, so don't open the oven at all during the first 75% of the bake, and then stick to the recommended cooking time.

Puff pastry is mainly made by 3 important ingredients, flour, water, and fat (butter or oil). Unfortunately, I learned that butter and oil, consist of 100% fat. I've successfully created puff pastry using oil in a pan before. It works!

You can use the entire sheet of puff to make a big tart, shape smaller individual tarts, or even bake the puff inside muffin cups and fill them later. Bake the pastries at 425°F until puffed: Bake just until you see them puff up and just start to brown, roughly 10 minutes.

Sausage rolls: Sausage rolls and other types of rolls, even Beef Wellington, also work really well with rough puff pastry. Pie crust: My recipe for pie dough which I use to make apple pie actually follows a very similar method to achieve that flaky pastry result.