Puff pastry

Leaf pastry and yolk.

Puff pastry is a crunchy dough used to make cakes and other culinary preparations. It is made with flour, fat (butter, lard or margarine), water and salt. It is crunchy after cooking. The similar phyllo dough is widespread in the eastern Mediterranean.

References to pasta and puff pastry could be found in ancient Greece and Rome.^{[citation needed]}

Crafting

Tuna pickles.

To achieve the final texture, a dough of flour, water and salt (masijo) is prepared and spread. The fat that is used (filling) is spread over it and folded on itself several times. Repeating this operation leaves thin sheets separated by the fat used. These retain the steam that is generated by the water in the dough during cooking and these sheets separate like the pages of a book.

Classification

Depending on the composition (amount of fat)

The real or true puff pastry is the one that has the same amount of fat and flour for its preparation. On the other hand, the three quarters uses, as its name suggests, three quarters of fat for each full part of flour, while the half puff pastry is the one with 500 g of butter per kg of flour.

Depending on the production method

Puff pastry is called French or direct when the mixture (dough) surrounds the filling (fat matter), reverse or inverted when the paste surrounds the mixture, and fast when the dough is a single one in which all the ingredients were united from the beginning.

History

Beef needles.

The origin of puff pastry can be found in medieval confectionery in areas under Arab influence, although its origin is probably earlier, and classic references to puff pastry can be found in Greece. Sweet or savory puff pastries were made in Spain prior to the 17th century (see 'El Buscón' by Francisco de Quevedo, written in 1604). Originally, each very thin sheet was made separately and, smeared with fat, they were joined, as is still done in dishes such as Moroccan pastry, in something similar to phyllo dough.

The Spanish cook Hernández Máceras in his “Libro del arte de cozina” published in 1607, gives a recipe for puff pastry very similar to the one we know today, and distinguishes between puff pastry preparations stuffed, which he calls pastel, pastelillo or pastelón, depending on their size, and empanadas, made with bread dough or similar.

In France, the oldest document containing the recipe for a puff pastry comes from a church charter published in 1311 by Bishop Robert of Amiens. However, the French maintain that the French form of puff pastry was created by the painter Claude Gelée, born in the year 1600 in Lorraine, France. In addition to painting, he worked for a master pastry chef, who suggested that he apply his innate artistic ingenuity in the kitchen. Claude moved to Rome, where he became known as 'Le Lorrain'. (from Lorraine), for his native region. One day at work he decided to invent a special bread for his father who was sick and, indifferent to the advice of his superiors, he enclosed a piece of butter inside the dough bun, which would later be cooked. The result was a success, although the famous puff pastry would be perfected after Claude suppressed the yeast and applied the technique of folding and alternating dough and fat, for a better separation of the sheets of dough during cooking.

Then another renowned pastry chef, the Frenchman Marie Antoine Carême, establishes the number of folds that must be made for an adequate separation of the sheets. He is also the creator of the vol-au-vent, a puff pastry hollowed out to be filled as desired.

There is a very interesting version that should not be ruled out. It is said that in France, in a famous bakery, an assistant worked a dough that the head baker ordered. This helper forgot to put the fat in the dough, and when he realized it, the dough was already kneaded without fat. Worried that the head baker would scold him, he rolled out the dough, put the fat in the center and folded the dough several times, spreading it out more and more. Finally the head baker arrived and made his rolls as usual. Seeing that the dough rose evenly and made several layers together like a book, he was surprised and called his assistant. As the assistant explained what had happened, the boss hugged him and congratulated him on the new dough he had created. After a few years, this dough was perfected and variants came out that are the same dough with different amounts of fat and folds.

Use

The oldest use may have been the Arab bstela (or pastela) that has been given in Spain to pastries, which traditionally were always puff pastry, with various fillings, although the pastela is made with phyllo dough, that is, sheet by sheet.

Currently it is used both in savory dishes, such as vol-au-vent (vol-au-vent), which gives rise to filling it with many products; as in desserts and sweets like millefeuille. There are numerous varieties, both sweet and savory, many of them typical of a specific town, such as ties, miguelitos, calves, sextons, some donuts and polkas.

Although the term puff pastry is used to refer to the dry and crunchy variety, there are various puff pastry masses that are used, for example, to make croissants, bayonnaises, or palmeras.