Wordless Wednesday: Croissants with home made puff pastry

Recipe: Cut puff pastry in triangles, roll them, brush them with egg and bake them at 350 F for 20 min or until golden

International tarting makes puff pastry crossovers

You know how they say some things are worth the time you put into them? Let me tell you, puff pastry is one of them. 

That smell of butter cooking, those flakes that break when you bite into it, the layers of goodness... 

Seriously guys, worth the hours, the effort and the muscles. You have to make puff pastry at home. You just have to. For real. I insist. It really is not so hard, more a matter of patience than anything else. Of all the International Tarting challenges so far, this is by far and large the yummiest one.

Let's talk puff pastry. First of all, very important to weigh ingredients, no cups here, you want to get exact measures. Even more important, work fast and keep things cold. The last thing you want is to melt your butter while you're working with it. Just work fast and if things seem to get too warm, stick them in the fridge for a while.
Puff pastry is made out of two parts. There's the détrempe and the beurre manié. These quantities are for 900 g or 2 lb of puff pastry, which believe me, you're gonna be happy to have.

For the détrempe you're gonna need

150 mL cold water (2/3 cup)
5g salt (1 teaspoon)
350g flour (12 oz)
110g butter (3.8 oz, 1 stick) , melted and cooled

For the beurre manié

375 g butter (13.2 oz)
150 g flour (5.3 oz)

Start by making the détrempe. With a mixer or a wooden spoon, combine the melted butter with the flour and the salt. Then add the water and mix until the dough comes together. Roll the dough until you get a rectangle of 20 cm length, 15 cm width (8x6 in aproximately). Cover it with plastic wrap and refrigerate.

Now let's make the beurre manié. Cut the butter in cubes and cream it. I did it with a hand mixer, took a while, but just be patient and keep working it until creamed. Just make sure it doesn't get hot and melts. Now add the flour slowly and mix until combined. Here comes the messy part. Grab the 'dough' and roll it to form a rectangle the same size as the previous one. Rolling the dough between two pieces of plastic wrap really helps. Wrap it in plastic and refrigerate for 2 hr.

Here's where the folding process starts. This is a great tutorial to see what things should look like.

Roll your détrempe so it is 40 cm (16 in) long. Place the butter dough at the bottom part of it and fold the détrempe over the butter block as if you were folding a book. Now, place the 'book' so the spine is on your left and roll the dough (if it's sufficiently cold, the butter doesn't spread everywhere) until you get a 40 cm long, 20 cm wide rectangle. Visualize the middle axis of the dough. Grab the lower end and fold it over so it meets the middle axis. Do the same with the top part of the dough. Now completely fold the dough so it looks again like a closed book. You've completed the first double turn. Wrap the dough and refrigerate for 1 hr.

After refrigerating, repeat the process so you do another double turn. When you've done your double turn twice, you're ready to do the final rolling. Roll the dough (spine on your left) into a rectangle a little bigger than a piece of paper. now visualize three pieces of the same size and fold them like you would do with a letter. You're done! you have your puff pastry! Your arms hurt and you're tired but you're ready to do wonders with it. If you don't want to use it all at once, freeze the dough well wrapped in plastic.

Now for the crossovers. Roll the dough in pieces of about 20 cm length, 10 cm width (6x3 in) and place whatever you want the filling to be in the center.

Slice the sides of the dough in strips and fold over. Brush with egg and bake at 350 F for about 30 min or until golden on top.

Have a picnic under the sun at the closest park. Or enjoy them at home. Or wherever you want. Bite into them, into those soft flakes and that gooey juice from the berries.

You are gonna eat the last bit of those crumbs. I'm telling you.

About the leftover puff pastry... we'll talk croissants soon. 

International tarting goes Hebrew: Rugelach!

People, I introduce you to Rugelach. Or the pastry of heavenly taste. 

What are rugelach? They're a jewish pastry with a cream cheese and butter dough. The most traditional filling (as far as I'm concerned) is the prune one. But any fruity filling works well, so if you're not a big prune fan, choose your favorite jam and you're good to go...

As you readers might now... Me and Maria from Remena Nena have started this thing of ours called 'International Tarting'. The idea is to take recipes that have something challenging to them and try to make them in both sides of the Atlantic. And believe me, this dough, as good as it is, it´s not easy to roll...

But these beauties are worth it

The recipe is adapted from 'Every last cookie' and comes from the Martha Stewart cookie cookbook

I omitted any added sugar since the prunes are sweet themselves and just didn't have white bread around (I'm a wheat girl). The prunes are supposed to be soaked in liquor but again, no liquor around, water works just fine. 

Oh I almost forgot! I made some chocolate ones as well!

For the dough:

2 sticks of butter

8 ounces cream cheese at room temperature

2 cups all purpose flour

For the prune filling:

1 cup prunes

1/2 cup water

For the chocolate filling:

3 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped

To sprinkle, cinnamon

To make the dough:

Cut the butter (cold) into cubes. In a bowl, mix the butter with the cream cheese. I started with my hands, realized it was not gonna happen and switched to 2 knifes. Add the flour. Here it gets complicated... the recipe calls for not overworking the dough but I found it pretty much impossible to blend everything together without putting a huge amount of effort into it. Just do it as well as you can and make sure all the flour is incorporated. The dough will be VERY sticky. Divide it in half and prepare to flour your rolling pin  and counter thoroughly. Roll each half of the dough into a disk. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least an hour. I refrigerated overnight.

Prepare the prune filling:

Do ahead. Place the prunes and water (or brandy) in a container and let it soak overnight. Take the prunes out of the liquid and puree. I didn't quite do the math right here since I made filling for an entire recipe but only filled half the rugelach with prune. Well, that meant double the filling and I certainly won't complain about the result. 

To make the rugelach

Preheat your oven to 325 F

Spread the prune filling on one of the dough disks, sprinkle with cinnamon. Leave a 3/4 inch border (aprox.) on the outer side. With a pizza cutter, cut the dough into 16 pieces. I tried to see if cutting it into 8 would make too big rugelach and it does. They are harder to roll and don't look as pretty. You can always eat them in pairs. Now roll the dough from the outside to the inside. The wet prune filling makes it a little messy but don't worry, once in the oven it doesn't spread everywhere. Sprinkle the surface with cinnamon.

For the chocolate ones, repeat the process covering the disk with chocolate chunks. 

(Now you can refrigerate them for an hour, I couldn't find enough patience to do so.)

Bake for 40-50 min. When the rugelach are done, the outside will be crisp and golden. Let cool completely before eating (if you can). Enjoy, I know you will.