The September 2009 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Steph of A Whisk and a Spoon. She chose the French treat, Vol-au-Vents based on the Puff Pastry recipe by Michel Richard from the cookbook Baking With Julia by Dorie Greenspan.

I have to admit that I was a little terrified when I saw what Steph had chosen for this month’s Daring Bakers Challenge. I’d been doing fine and dandy with the cookies, cakes, and tarts I’ve tried since I’ve joined, but this looked like a real challenge!

I mean, c’mon…seriously…pastry??? People go to school to become pastry chefs. Doesn’t this require a degree or something? And puff pastry no less! Doesn’t this mean days of slaving away in the kitchen, turning and folding the pastry over and over in order to get those hundreds of tiny layers?? I’ve never made pastry before. Shouldn’t I sign up for a class or something before embarking on this guaranteed disaster at home?

I actually did talk to Hubby about skipping this month’s challenge, with excuses like “there’s so much going on at work this month” and “aren’t all our weekends already filled up with plans?” and even “I can’t do this challenge because we don’t have a food processor!”. He saw through all of my excuses, and reminded me that the reason I joined Daring Bakers was to actually be daring and challenged. Oh. Yeah. About that…

I put it off for as long as I could, and finally decided to bite the bullet. Turned out I had nothing to worry about. The puff pastry was surprisingly easy! Yeah, you read that right, E-A-S-Y. No more excuse for store-bought puff pastry sheets. These little babies put Pillsbury to shame. So rich and buttery, light and flaky. Mmm…I think I’ll go have another…

Puff Pastry Dough: Vol-au-Vents

Adapted from “Baking with Julia” by Dorie Greenspan. Recipe yields 2-1/2 pounds dough.

Ok, first, let me give you some instructions for the instructions.
1) Read through the instructions. Completely.
2) Read through them again because they just didn’t quite make sense the first time.
3) Watch the Julia Child and Michel Richard video demonstrating how to make puff pastry. (Note the verbal ingredients they give out are a little different than the recipe. I used the recipe.)
4) Read through the instructions one more time, this time saying “ohhh” and “ahhh” in an enlightened manner as you now realize what the instructions mean.

Seriously. I think I watched the first few minutes of the video about 6 or 7 times before and during making the puff pastry. They make it look so easy, because IT IS really that easy! The trick, I’ve learned, is all about temperature control. Try to work quickly and remember that your refrigerator is puff pastry’s best friend.

INGREDIENTS:

2-1/2 cups (12.2 oz/ 354 g) unbleached all-purpose flour
1-1/4 cups (5.0 oz/ 142 g) cake flour
1 1/2 tsp. salt (you can increase this to 1 Tbs. if you are using it for a savory dish)
1-1/4 cups (10 fl oz/ 300 ml) ice water
1 pound (16 oz/ 454 g) very cold unsalted butter (I stuck mine in the freezer for about 10 minutes before I started working with it, just to be safe)
extra flour for dusting work surface

DIRECTIONS:

Mixing the Dough – Food Processor Style

Check the capacity of your food processor before you start. If it cannot hold the full quantity of ingredients, make the dough into two batches and combine them.

Put the all-purpose flour, cake flour, and salt in the work bowl of a food processor fitted with a metal blade and pulse a couple of times just to mix. Add the water all at once, pulsing until the dough forms a ball on the blade. The dough will be very moist and pliable and will hold together when squeezed between your fingers. (Actually, it will feel like Play-Doh.)

Remove the dough from the machine, form it into a ball, with a small sharp knife, slash the top in a tic-tac-toe pattern. Wrap the dough in a damp towel and refrigerate for about 5 minutes.

Mixing the Dough – Old School Style

In a large bowl, whisk together the all-purpose flour, cake flour, and salt to mix. Add the water all at once. Working quickly, use a spatula to try to blend as much of the flour and water together as you can. Use your fingers to try to knead together the rest of the dough (don’t use the palm of your hand, it’ll give off too much heat). The dough will be very moist and pliable and will hold together when squeezed between your fingers.

Roll the dough into a ball, and with a small sharp knife, slash the top in a tic-tac-toe pattern. Wrap the dough in a damp towel and refrigerate for about 5 minutes.

Incorporating the Butter:

This is the fun part. Hubby ran over when I was doing the butter part and yelled over all the noise, “What on earth are you doing??!”
Me: “I’m making puff pastry!! See?! Aren’t you proud of me?!?”
Him: “You’re going to make all the neighbors mad!”
Me: “Well then I’ll give them some puff pastry and they’ll forget all about it…”

While the dough is chillin’ in the fridge (hardy har har), place the butter between 2 sheets of plastic wrap. Beat the snot out of it with a rolling pin until it flattens into a square that’s about 1″ thick. Take care that the butter remains cool and firm: if it has softened or become oily, chill it before continuing.

Unwrap the dough and place it on a work surface dusted with all-purpose flour (a cool piece of marble is the ideal surface for puff pastry) with your rolling pin, press on the dough to flatten it and then roll it into a 10″ square. Keep the top and bottom of the dough well floured to prevent sticking and lift the dough and move it around frequently. Starting from the center of the square, roll out over each corner to create a thick center pad with “ears,” or flaps.

Place the cold butter in the middle of the dough and fold the ears over the butter, stretching them as needed so that they overlap slightly and encase the butter completely. (If you have to stretch the dough, stretch it from all over; don’t just pull the ends) you should now have a package that is 8″ square.

To make great puff pastry, it is important to keep the dough cold at all times. There are specified times for chilling the dough, but if your room is warm, or you work slowly, or you find that for no particular reason the butter starts to ooze out of the pastry, cover the dough with plastic wrap and refrigerate it . You can stop at any point in the process and continue at your convenience or when the dough is properly chilled. Remember, the refrigerator is your friend.

Making the Turns:

Gently but firmly press the rolling pin against the top and bottom edges of the square (this will help keep it square). Then, keeping the work surface and the top of the dough well floured to prevent sticking, roll the dough into a rectangle that is three times as long as the square you started with, about 24″ (don’t worry about the width of the rectangle: if you get the 24″, everything else will work itself out.) With this first roll, it is particularly important that the butter be rolled evenly along the length and width of the rectangle; check when you start rolling that the butter is moving along well, and roll a bit harder or more evenly, if necessary, to get a smooth, even dough-butter sandwich (use your arm-strength!).

With a pastry brush, brush off the excess flour from the top of the dough, and fold the rectangle up from the bottom and down from the top in thirds, like a business letter, brushing off the excess flour. You have completed one turn.

Rotate the dough so that the closed fold is to your left, like the spine of a book. Repeat the rolling and folding process, rolling the dough to a length of 24″ and then folding it in thirds. This is the second turn.

Chilling the Dough:

If the dough is still cool and no butter is oozing out, you can give the dough another two turns now. If the condition of the dough is iffy, wrap it in plastic wrap and refrigerate it for at least 30 minutes. Each time you refrigerate the dough, mark the number of turns you’ve completed by indenting the dough with your fingertips. It is best to refrigerate the dough for 30 to 60 minutes between each set of two turns.

The total number of turns needed is six. If you prefer, you can give the dough just four turns now, chill it overnight, and do the last two turns the next day. Puff pastry is extremely flexible in this regard. However, no matter how you arrange your schedule, you should plan to chill the dough for at least an hour before cutting or shaping it.

Forming and Baking the Vol-au-Vents

Now, all of the above was just to make the puff pastry dough, which you use to make the vol-au-vents. Vol-au-vent is French for “windblown” or “flight in the wind” to describe its lightness. A vol-au-vent is a small hollow case of puff pastry, which can accommodate various delicious fillings, such as mushrooms, shrimp, fruit, or cheese, but they are almost always savory. I decided to go against the grain and fill mine with sweetened whipped cream and peaches.

Yield: 1/3 of the puff pastry recipe above will yield about 8-10 1.5” vol-au-vents or 4 4” vol-au-vents

You Will Need:
-egg wash (1 egg or yolk beaten with a small amount of water)
-your filling of choice

Line a baking sheet with parchment and set aside.

Using a knife or metal bench scraper, divided your chilled puff pastry dough into three equal pieces. Work with one piece of the dough, and leave the rest wrapped and chilled. (If you are looking to make more vol-au-vents than the yield stated above, you can roll and cut the remaining two pieces of dough as well…if not, then leave refrigerated for the time being or prepare it for longer-term freezer storage. See the “Tips” section below for more storage info.)

On a lightly floured surface, roll the piece of dough into a rectangle about 1/8 to 1/4-inch thick. Transfer it to the baking sheet and refrigerate for about 10 minutes before proceeding with the cutting.

(This assumes you will be using round cutters, but if you do not have them, it is possible to cut square vol-au-vents using a sharp chef’s knife.) For smaller, hors d’oeuvre sized vol-au-vents, use a 1.5” round cutter to cut out 8-10 circles. For larger sized vol-au-vents, fit for a main course or dessert, use a 4” cutter to cut out about 4 circles. Make clean, sharp cuts and try not to twist your cutters back and forth or drag your knife through the dough. Half of these rounds will be for the bases, and the other half will be for the sides. (Save any scrap by stacking—not wadding up—the pieces…they can be re-rolled and used if you need extra dough. If you do need to re-roll scrap to get enough disks, be sure to use any rounds cut from it for the bases, not the ring-shaped sides.)

Using a 3/4-inch cutter for small vol-au-vents, or a 2- to 2.5-inch round cutter for large, cut centers from half of the rounds to make rings. These rings will become the sides of the vol-au-vents, while the solid disks will be the bottoms. You can either save the center cut-outs to bake off as little “caps” for you vol-au-vents, or put them in the scrap pile.

Dock the solid bottom rounds with a fork (prick them lightly, making sure not to go all the way through the pastry) and lightly brush them with egg wash. Place the rings directly on top of the bottom rounds and very lightly press them to adhere. Brush the top rings lightly with egg wash, trying not to drip any down the sides (which may inhibit rise). If you are using the little “caps,” dock and egg wash them as well.

Refrigerate the assembled vol-au-vents on the lined baking sheet while you pre-heat the oven to 400 degrees F. (You could also cover and refrigerate them for a few hours at this point.)

Once the oven is heated, remove the sheet from the refrigerator and place another sheet of parchment over top of the shells. This will help them rise evenly. Bake the shells until they have risen and begin to brown, about 10-15 minutes depending on their size. Reduce the oven temperature to 350 degrees F, and remove the parchment sheet from the top of the vol-au-vents. If the centers have risen up inside the vol-au-vents, you can gently press them down. Continue baking (with no sheet on top) until the layers are golden, about 15-20 minutes more. (If you are baking the center “caps” they will likely be finished well ahead of the shells, so keep an eye on them and remove them from the oven when browned.)

Remove to a rack to cool. Cool to room temperature for cold fillings or to warm for hot fillings.

Fill and serve.

TIPS:

- For additional rise on the larger-sized vol-au-vents, you can stack one or two additional ring layers on top of each other (using egg wash to “glue”). This will give higher sides to larger vol-au-vents, but is not advisable for the smaller ones, whose bases may not be large enough to support the extra weight.

- Although they are at their best filled and eaten soon after baking, baked vol-au-vent shells can be stored airtight for a day.

- Shaped, unbaked vol-au-vents can be wrapped and frozen for up to a month (bake from frozen, egg-washing them first).

- Keep things cool by using the refrigerator as your friend! If you see any butter starting to leak through the dough during the turning process, rub a little flour on the exposed dough and chill straight away. Although you should certainly chill the dough for 30 to 60 minutes between each set of two turns, if you feel the dough getting to soft or hard to work with at any point, pop in the fridge for a rest.

- Not to sound contradictory, but if you chill your dough longer than the recommended time between turns, the butter can firm up too much. If this seems to be the case, I advise letting it sit at room temperature for 5-10 minutes to give it a chance to soften before proceeding to roll. You don’t want the hard butter to separate into chunks or break through the dough…you want it to roll evenly, in a continuous layer.

- Roll the puff pastry gently but firmly, and don’t roll your pin over the edges, which will prevent them from rising properly. Don’t roll your puff thinner than about about 1/8 to 1/4-inch thick, or you will not get the rise you are looking for.

- Try to keep “neat” edges and corners during the rolling and turning process, so the layers are properly aligned. Give the edges of the dough a scooch with your rolling pin or a bench scraper to keep straight edges and 90-degree corners.

- Brush off excess flour before turning dough and after rolling.

- Make clean cuts. Don’t drag your knife through the puff or twist your cutters too much, which can inhibit rise.

- When egg washing puff pastry, try not to let extra egg wash drip down the cut edges, which can also inhibit rise.

- Extra puff pastry dough freezes beautifully. It’s best to roll it into a sheet about 1/8 to 1/4-inch thick (similar to store-bought puff) and freeze firm on a lined baking sheet. Then you can easily wrap the sheet in plastic, then foil (and if you have a sealable plastic bag big enough, place the wrapped dough inside) and return to the freezer for up to a few months. Defrost in the refrigerator when ready to use.

- You can also freeze well-wrapped, unbaked cut and shaped puff pastry (i.e., unbaked vol-au-vent shells). Bake from frozen, without thawing first.

- Homemade puff pastry is precious stuff, so save any clean scraps. Stack or overlap them, rather than balling them up, to help keep the integrity of the layers. Then give them a singe “turn” and gently re-roll. Scrap puff can be used for applications where a super-high rise is not necessary (such as palmiers, cheese straws, napoleons, or even the bottom bases for your vol-au-vents).