Quick puff pastry recipes (salty and sweet)

Laminated doughs such as puff pastry, croissant dough, or Danish dough, are a bit complicated to make at home because it is vital that the lamination, those thin layers that make it up, of dough and fat, be homogeneous, favor the expansion of the dough when baking it and create that characteristic flaky texture. The puff pastry, which in a very curious way inflates when baked –as we explain in this video– it is ideal for preparing a multitude of quick and delicious vegetarian recipes, both in savory and sweet versions.

How to cook puff pastry

The process to prepare one at home is long and delicate, which is why it is not usually done at home, but refrigerated or frozen doughs are bought. Today we have a good variety of vegan puff pastry and also gluten-free, which will give us very good results if we use them well.

Thaw the dough at room temperature. To defrost puff pastry, it is best to leave it at room temperature until it is elastic enough that we can unfold it (they usually come folded) without breaking it. That is, do not use the oven, the microwave or any quick method, because we need the dough to remain very cold but still manageable. This is because if we let the dough warm too much, especially in summer, the fats will melt and instead of creating crispy layers, we will have a greasy dough.Knead at low temperature. If we can work the dough at 9-12ºC (and not rise from there), it will be perfect: it will rise quite a bit in the oven, it will not shrink too much, it will form the layers well, etc. Be careful, it is also important here what we do with the dough and at what temperature we bake it, but the first thing is to keep it cold.Keep the dough in the fridge until the last moment. The refrigerated masses temper very quickly once we take them out of the fridge, so your thing is to leave them there until the right moment to use them, and proceed as quickly as possible.Do not handle the dough excessively. If we handle the dough a lot, you will see that it becomes very, very elastic, deforms and even breaks.

What is the best puff pastry to cook?

For cake shop In general, it is better to use the frozen masses because they tend to be much thicker. refrigerated masses they are thinner and more elastic and we may need to stack several masses to achieve the same effect. In commercial masses they do not usually specify the type of flour that has been used (“strength” or % gluten of the flour). Doughs made with strong flour or bread, with a higher gluten content, take longer to relax, which gives us more room to maneuver with them. In many commercial doughs, you will see ingredients such as ascorbic or citric acid appear, which are added so that the dough is more manageable, bendable and extensible. This makes the dough rise a little more than if it did not have acids. It also serves as a preservative, to reduce the enzymatic activity of the dough, especially when it is refrigerated, and to make it last longer.

Quick puff pastry recipes

With the puff pastry you can prepare both sweet and savory pastries. Puff pastry, in general, contains no sugar (or hardly any), and therefore the flavor is quite neutral.

Vol au vents puff pastry

One of the basic preparations with puff pastry isvol au vent or volauvaneswhich are like small containers of cooked puff pastry that we fill with savory or sweet ingredients.
To make vol au vents:

Roll out the dough on a smooth surface and preheat the oven to 200ºC with heat up and down. Prepare a baking tray with a silicone sheet or baking paper. Cut circles 10 cm in diameter with a cookie cutter. These will be the bases of the vol au vents. Now cut more circles, but cut out the center with a 6cm cutter. We have one ring of dough left. Place the ring on one of the circles. So that the bottom mass that is seen in the center does not grow, prick it with a knife several times. This way only the edges will grow, giving rise to a little bowl of puff pastry. Repeat with the rest of the dough and bake it at medium height for 12 minutes, until you see that it is golden brown. Let them cool and you can use them. You can store them in the fridge , without crushing, in a closed bag or a tightly closed container, and they will last a couple of days. If after that time they are a little soft, you can dehydrate them a little in the oven (about 15 minutes at 160ºC). Fill the volauvanes, for example, with vegetable pâtés (hummus, babaganoush, mushroom pâté, etc.) and decorate at the end so that they look beautiful. You can use fresh chopped herbs, seeds, sauces… Serve them as canapés or appetizers.

In the case of sweet volauvans, They are usually served as a dessert. It is very easy to fill them with a vegan, vanilla or chocolate pastry cream, for example, custard, coconut cream, fruit puree with pieces… and decorate with citrus zest, cocoa or chocolate chips, crunchy granules of nuts. ..

puff pastry croissants

To make croissants, a very similar dough is usually used, but with fresh yeast. Still, you can make croissants from puff pastry.

Preheat the oven to 200ºC and prepare a tray with silicone or baking paper.Stretch the dough and cut it into triangles. It’s very easy, place the dough horizontally and make the cuts from top to bottom.Roll up the triangles and fold them to give them the shape of little horns.Place them on the tray leaving some space so they can grow well and do not stick.Bake them for 15-20 minutes at medium height, or until they begin to brown. Take them out, let them warm a little and they can be served. iStock

Palmeritas De Hojaldre

To make palmeritas it is almost the same, but we do not cut the dough into triangles, what we do is roll both sides towards the center and then cut slices.

Each of these slices is a palmerita. Try not to make them too thin so that they do not fall apart or remain hard. We can also use the puff pastry to make shaped snacks. For example, we can cut strips of puff pastry, roll them in on themselves and sprinkle with sesame and rosemary seeds. Or create other shapes like braids, snails or pinwheels, which are also very typical, and sprinkle with sweet or savory ingredients. The cooking time is a little less than palm trees and croissants because they are smaller pieces.

puff pastry tartlets

If we want to use the dough to make savory or sweet cake bases, it is best to bake it first in the mold, but without ingredients, just the puff pastry. This way we will have an already grown and crunchy base on which to put vegetables, vegetables, legumes and what we want.

If we don’t want the dough to rise a lot, we can prick it with a fork all over the surface. If we don’t mind that the dough doesn’t grow much, we can put it in the mold, put the ingredients on top and bake everything together. Remember that the more the ingredients weigh, the less it will grow. And the more water they have, the softer the dough will be. If we want to make a closed tartlet, the top will grow very well, but when the water vapor from the ingredients condenses, a large lump can form. To avoid this, make a few holes in the dough before putting it on (we can make them in the shape of leaves, so that it is decorative). This way the hot steam from the ingredients escapes and allows the puff pastry that we have put on top to rise better. After baking, the top part will be flaky and crispy, a perfect contrast for fillings such as the typical “meatloaf” (vegan, of course) or fruit creams.