The Baking Answer Book (39 page)

Q
What are the similarities and differences between puff pastry, croissant dough, and Danish dough?

A
Puff pastry, croissant dough, and Danish dough are all made by wrapping dough around a large slab of butter and then repeatedly rolling out and folding the packet, creating very thin alternating layers of dough and butter. When baked, the steam created as the butter melts pushes the layers of dough away from each other. The fat in the butter helps brown and crisp the layers and gives them great flavor.

They differ in their ingredients beyond butter. Puff pastry is made with just butter, flour, water, and salt. All of its flavor comes from butter and all of its rise depends on the steam created when the butter melts. Its many separate crackerlike leaves give it a crisp texture with no cakelike crumb.

To make croissant dough, the slab of butter is surrounded with a bread dough made of flour, milk, and yeast. Croissants are flaky like puff pastry, but with a soft but chewy texture from the gluten that develops during kneading and rolling.

For Danish, a briochelike yeast dough made with eggs encloses the butter. The egg protein gives Danish a more cakelike structure than puff pastry and croissant dough.

Q
Is there any special equipment needed to make layered pastry dough?

A
If you bake regularly you probably have all of the equipment you need. See the following page.

Pastry Equipment

An
electric stand mixer
is necessary for the mixing and, in the case of croissant and Danish dough, the kneading of the dough, although the dough for puff pastry can also be mixed in a food processor.

A
rolling pin
is necessary to pound the butter into a malleable mass before enclosing it in the dough packet, and then to roll the dough packet multiple times.

A
sharp paring knife
or a
pizza wheel
is used to cut croissants into triangle shapes before rolling them up, as well as to cut out and make decorative cuts in puff pastry. Cookie cutters can also be used to cut Danish dough into decorative shapes before you top it with frangipane or fruit.

Use a
pastry brush
to paint the surface of the pastry with an egg wash, which will give it beautiful color and sheen.

Bake puff pastry, croissants, and Danish on
rimless baking sheets
with
parchment paper
. Not only does the parchment paper make cleanup easy (no egg wash baked onto the pan), but it also helps with removing the delicate pastries from the baking sheet to cool. Just slide the sheet, with the pastries still on it, to a wire rack and let them cool completely. It’s especially important with these types of pastries that they cool on a rack, with air circulating below as well as above them, to maintain their crisp texture.

Q
What is the difference between a single turn and a double turn?

A
For doughs containing a butter slab, repeated rolling and folding of the dough results in a finished pastry that may have over 1,000 alternating layers of dough and butter. There are two different ways of folding the dough — single and double turns. Sometimes they are used alone, sometimes in combination.

For a single turn, the dough is rolled into a rectangle and then folded like a letter, the bottom third folded over the middle third, and then the top third folded over the first two layers. The result is a smaller 3-layered rectangle.

For a double turn, the dough is also rolled into a rectangle. The dough is folded from the top edge to the midpoint of the rectangle. Then the bottom edge is also folded to the midpoint, meeting the top edge. The dough is then folded in half, lengthwise along the midpoint, creating a smaller, 4-layered rectangle.

Different chefs have varying ideas about the type and number of turns puff pastry, croissant, and Danish dough require. Everyone agrees that puff pastry must have as many layers as possible. The classic French recipe calls for six single turns to create those 1,000 layers, but to save time, many pastry chefs will use two double and two single turns.

To give croissants their crisp leaves of pastry, the dough shouldn’t be folded into as many layers as puff pastry dough.
Fewer turns will make fewer leaves that are more distinct and crackly. Croissant dough is more elastic and more difficult to roll than puff pastry dough, because it has been kneaded to develop the flour’s gluten. Croissant dough is generally given single, not double, turns, because the thicker four-layer dough would be too difficult to roll out again into a larger rectangle.

Danish dough, made soft and stretchy with the addition of sugar and eggs, easily takes double turns, but doesn’t need to rise as high as puff pastry. Two double turns will be enough to give it a nice flakiness without too much height.

Q
Why is it so important to chill these doughs after every turn?

A
There are two reasons for chilling the dough after every turn. First, and most important, is keeping the butter layers that you are creating from melting. When puff pastry, croissant dough, and Danish dough go into the oven, those layers of butter must be solid. Only when the butter is solid will it be able to do its job — melt and give off the steam that lifts the dough layers high. If the butter is the least bit melted before it goes into the oven, less steam will be created and the dough won’t rise to its full potential.

Resting serves another purpose. As the dough is rolled, gluten develops, making it elastic and bouncy. Refrigerating the dough for 30 minutes to 1 hour between turns allows the gluten to relax, making the dough easier to roll into a large rectangle before turning.

Q
My puff pastry tart was soggy on the bottom even though it was golden along the edges. How can I prevent this from happening next time?

A
Puff pastry is characterized not only by its high rise, but also by its crisp texture. Every bit of moisture should be baked out of it to achieve ultimate flakiness. When baking puff pastry, you want to go past golden and well into brown, so that the dough underneath the crust is fully dry. You might try baking a tart with, say, sliced apples on top in the bottom third of the oven so the bottom crust is closer to the heat and more likely to crisp up along with the top edge. For all types of puff pastry try a trick I learned from former White House pastry chef Roland Mesnier, who props open the oven door slightly with a wooden spoon when the pastry has started to brown. He continues to bake it this way, so steam can escape the oven, until the pastry is a dark golden brown and completely cooked through.

Q
Most of the recipes I see call for frozen purchased puff pastry. Is it better to substitute homemade puff pastry if you can?

A
Making puff pastry takes hours (although much of that time is spent waiting for the dough to chill in the refrigerator) and a lot of muscle (the pounding of the butter and the rolling of the dough will give your forearms a workout). Even pastry chefs at four-star restaurants in New York and Paris use frozen purchased puff pastry to save themselves
time and effort. If you are able to buy an all-butter brand such as Dufour, which is available at gourmet stores and upscale supermarkets such as Whole Foods, you may want to follow suit. The flavor of purchased all-butter puff pastry will be as good as homemade, since both are made from top-quality butter, flour, salt, and water. Not only that, but because it is rolled out by machine, purchased puff pastry will be of an even thickness and have a uniform rise, while homemade puff pastry will be only as even as your skill allows.