Kitchen Project #157: Puff Pastry Revisited
New Year, New Dough!
Hello,
Welcome to today’s edition of Kitchen Projects, the very first of 2025. HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Today I’m here to convince you to make puff pastry, and to do a bit of a recipe review; From adjusting the fat content to the hydration plus comparing egg washes, I’ve started the year with a bit of a refresh. And it feels good!
Over on KP+, I’m sharing a recipe for the classic almond and puff pastry galette des rois, as well as telling you how to achieve cross lamination at home, ft a gorgeous pear and almond galette from SIFT (but with helpful GIFs!). Click here for the recipe.
What’s KP+? Well, it’s the level-up version of this newsletter. By joining KP+, you will support the writing and research that goes into the newsletter (including the commissioning - and fair payment - of all the writers), join a growing community, access extra content (inc., the entire archive) and more. Subscribing is easy and only costs £6 per month or £50 for the whole year. Why not give it a go? Come and join the gang!
Love,
Nicola
Rising to the occasion
We all do it. Come January, we make our lists of dreams, hopes, administrative to-dos and plans for the year. Cruelly, at least in the UK, this coincides with the worst possible weather. The threat of snow, pavement-grey skies, and full-blown flu leaves us with all the enthusiasm but limited by things out of our control.
But one area of glorious upskilling ambition doesn’t require you to leave the house or even put on proper trousers: Baking. If I do say so myself, though I admit I’m biased, January is the perfect time to sharpen those pastry skills. So, friends and readers, may I offer an activity for your January consideration? Puff Pastry. Come on, you know you want to.
Puff pastry doesn’t care if you’ve barely changed out of your pyjamas or if you have to blow your nose every 5 minutes. And though it may seem tricky on the surface, I promise it has one of the best efforts to pay off ratios. Even though I’ve made kilos upon kilos of the stuff, I’ve never stopped being amazed at how it rises in the oven.
If you’ve never made it before, here are the cliff notes: Mix a simple dough (The ‘detrempe’) with flour and water, plus a little fat, sugar and salt, then fold in a block of pliable butter (‘the butter block). Once the detrempe is wrapped around the butter block, it is rolled out and folded (lamination) until the butter and dough form long alternating layers. When baked, the butter melts and creates steam, forcing the dough layers apart and enriching the surrounding dough, resulting in a risen flaky dough.
You can also make ‘inverted’ puff pastry, which flips the classic process. First, butter is combined with flour to create a buttery block. This block is then wrapped around a dough block, and lamination continues as usual. It sounds weird, I know, but there really is a method to the madness.
Once you are confident with either process, the active time is pretty minimal, and you are left with one of the most delicious, all-purpose doughs that can transform into gorgeous things. Plus, let’s be honest, what else is going on in January?!
King Cakes a plenty
In today’s newsletter, I will take you through a spring clean of my puff pastry recipes, what I’ve learned about hydration and fat content and share my favourite puff pastry laminating projects. Revisiting this recipe has filled me with so much enthusiasm and excitement! So just to give you a heads up - expect lots more puff-themed newsletters soon. Custard slice? Vol-Au-Vents? It’s all to come.
Over on KP+, I’m thrilled to share the recipe for my very special Cross Laminated Galette Des Rois, aka King’s Cake, which is traditionally eaten on epiphany (tomorrow!) all across France. This version is with fluffy almond frangipane and poached pear. I just love it.
Making any galette des rois is pure technical joy—layers of buttery puff pastry filled with frangipane, and somewhere inside, a tiny charm or "fève" is hidden. Whoever finds it gets to wear the crown and be king or queen for the day. While the traditional GDR is flufy the whole way through, the cross lamination adds an incredible bite and crunch to the top, and is soaked with a syrup made from the white-wine pear poaching liquid. Just gorgeous.
This recipe appears in SIFT, but I’ve decided to flesh out the instructions with GIFs and all the extra step-by-step photos we couldn’t fit in the book, so you have a more detailed and in-depth guide to nailing this technique at home.
I’ve also included a recipe for a classic Galette Des Rois with almond paste since I realised this was a huge glaring gap in the KP archive.
A recipe review
Now and again, I love to do a “spring clean” of my recipes. It’s the baking equivalent of clearing your wardrobe or organising the Tupperware draw. Going into this week, I was reviewing my original puff pastry newsletter (original and inverted) and realised that I still had questions to answer.
Though both newsletters went into detail about how the number of turns/folds affects the layers, I hadn’t looked into how the ratio of ingredients themselves, namely the butter and hydration, comes into play. My classic puff pastry and inverted recipes have over 100% butter to flour, while shop-bought puff (yes, I do have some. OF COURSE IT’S ALLOWED!) has just 50% butter to flour. Sure, the cost of ingredients probably plays a role here, but if money is no object and flavour and visual appeal are the only categories we’re judging, what is the effect?
I also wondered - what impact does splitting the fat between the detrempe (dough) and butter block have? All of the recipes I’ve ever made have had butter in both. I decided to gather all the recipes and look at their ratios to see how they were split.
I decided to mix up seven tests, spanning regular and inverted puff pastry, with varying fat and hydration amounts to compare. I also threw in my pie dough recipe, which uses both creme fraiche and water to hydrate, and rather than the regular part-rubbed-in, part-laminated technique I usually do, I laminated it just like puff pastry. I organised the tests from lowest to highest fat:
So what does it all mean? Well, to start with, let me tell you, not one of these tests was bad. None leaked, tasted greasy, or caused any issues during the lamination or baking process. For once, all of my subjects behaved impressively well. Though that might not be the most exciting result, I find it quite calming to know that it’s pretty difficult to make ‘bad’ puff pastry - it does have a lot of butter in it, after all.
I was also reminded that inverted puff pastry gives you a much more organised and structured puff pastry than classic. The layers are a bit thicker but still tender, and it rises much more evenly, too.
From the first tray, organised by lowest to highest fat, it seemed that more butter = taller, fluffier layers. And sure, that tracks, right? Butter = steam = layers! But what of pie dough? That has loads of butter in it… but lacks height. I reorganised the samples to take a closer look.
By organising the samples by hydration, from 28%-43%, you can see that the dough’s overall hydration, not just the butter, makes a big difference in the layers. There’s nothing more I love than knowing which levers to pull in baking - after a puff pastry that doesn’t rise too much and shows its layers? Try a lower-hydration inverted puff pastry. Looking for puff pastry that is wacky, wild and rises with reckless abandon with very fine, tender layers? Increase the hydration of your dough and up the butter - more is more!
Tasting each sample, I really enjoyed the 80-85% butter-to-flour level on both the inverted and classic recipes. It's still very buttery, but slightly narrower layers. I’ve updated both newsletters (classic here and inverted here) with the recipes so you can try these formulas for yourself.
The deal with Egg Wash
Egg wash has one job: To make our bakes look shiny, browned and beautiful. Without egg wash, your bakes will still brown… But they will be dull and much less appealing. I'm afraid we are in the business of judging books by their covers in baking. It works by coating your bakes in a thin layer of egg, which browns in the oven due to the proteins and sugars interacting in the Maillard reaction.
In the past, I’ve talked about the different kinds of egg wash, but what use is talking when I could be showing? Though it’s often down to the preference of the chef, the most popular and richest washes are whole eggs (with a pinch of salt to break down the proteins and make it more brushable), egg yolks, and egg yolks with cream.
Another way to improve the colour of your bakes is by applying multiple layers of your chosen egg wash, chilling in the freezer to set each time. I tested out the three most popular washes, going up to 3x layers.
Of course, there is a degree of variation due to the bake itself, but it’s clear that three layers are overkill. This pastry was baked for 20 minutes at 180c fan, and the triple-applied egg wash (except the whole egg) is already a touch too mahogany for my liking. While the yolk and yolk + cream are quite similar, the cream has a slightly richer aroma and good spreadability. The verdict? Equal parts yolks + cream, or just yolks, is essential when you want an extra special finish on your bakes, while whole eggs are still a good all-purpose option when you’re not going for the wow factor.
Alright, onto the recipes.
Puff Pastry
My classic recipe is now updated with the 85% butter recipe mentioned earlier. I promise, making your own is so mch fun and doesn’t take as long, nor is as hard as you think! Click here to learn more.
Inverted Puff Pastry
The ‘step up’ from classic puff pastry but still gloriously achieveable, I promise! I’ve also updated this with my new formulation with slightly less butter, but a more pleasing rise as mentioned in today’s newsletter. Click here for the recipe.
Million Layer Apple Galette
A gorgeous recipe for Epiphany, plus a technique you’ll enjoy again and again - caramelised apple terrine on a layer of frangipane, encased in buttery puff pastry. Definitely one of the best ways ever to enoy the galette des rois. Click here for the recipe.
Cross Laminated Galette / Classic Galette Des Rois
A double billing on this newsletter! Click here for the recipe.
Laminated Brioche / Queen Cake
An alternative recipe for the classic puff pastry - almond laminated and infused brioche dough and my ode to the New Orleans King Cake! Click here for the recipe.
Rough Puff Pastry / Buttery Onion Tart
My fave q**** (I HATE THAT WORD) recipe ft. my wholemeal rough puff recipe which works like a dream and can be used for any number of things. ENJOY! Click here for the recipe.
Thin Crispy Arlettes
Super thin, caramelised cinnamon puff pastry cookies. One of my absolute favourites. If the sun doesn’t shine through it, make it thinner! Click here for the recipe.
Cacio E Pepe Croutons with my favourite tomato soup
Could this recipe BE anymore january? Also how to turn your puff pastry offcuts into beautiful, relaminated sheets adding in cheese and black pepper as you go. Click here for the recipe.
I want to frame the egg wash photo. And I need that apple galette NOW.
Thank you for doing this deep dive on puff pastry. Your attention to detail/ratios is truly a joy to behold and the reason I subscribed oh so long ago (and also bought your book!) I tend always toward the rough/quick puff but I want to give the inverted method a try. I usually make palmiers with my scraps and just did a quick review of your technique for both of these -- very good info here! Thank you and Happy New Year!