Laminated pastry- the best pastry in the world!

This post is a pre-amble to my next post about Cronuts- how to make laminated pastry. This pastry is used for croissants, pain au chocolat's and a tonne of other beautiful pastries.

This laminated dough is essentially layered with butter, which is done by folding the pastry into 3 every few hours. Make this the night before for best results.

·         500g Strong White Flour

·         1.5 tsp salt

·         7g fast action dried yeast

·         25g caster sugar

·         300-320ml lukewarm water (lukewarm, not cold. Crucial difference.)

·         400g COLD unsalted butter

1. Easy as pie- put all the ingredients except the butter in a bowl, mix until the dough forms and then knead for 5 minutes or so on a floured surface. Put make in the bowl and leave to prove for 1 hour.
2. Take the cold butter, place between 2 pieces of laminated baking paper and flatten with a rolling pin to around 20cm by 60cm. This is hard work- don’t give up!
3. Take the dough, which should have doubled in size, and roll it out to 20cm by 60cm. Lay the sheet of butter on top of the dough in the top 2/3rds, and fold the bottom 3^rd of the dough over the top of the butter layer- think like a butter sandwich! Then fold the top 3^rd down over the rest of the butter sandwich.
4. This process will be repeated around 4 times, once every hour for 3 hours after you do the initial fold, and once in the morning an hour before you start baking. Leave in the fridge between each fold.

The next morning your dough should be gloriously risen and airy- if it is not, it is likely that you water was too cold at the first step, so the yeast wasn't properly activated.

See the next post for what to do with this glorious stuff!

Rachel x