Summer is certainly here-- the last thing that anyone really wants to do in this record heat wave is spend all day in the kitchen with a hot oven.
Desserts around this time of year usually revolve around fresh berries and other fruits, frozen desserts, and generally anything else that does not require a hot oven. If you do any baking it is generally as quick as possible.
Shortcakes are a great example-- Quick to put together, quick to bake, and very versatile. Of course I’m not one for conventional so as I look at my recipe for shortcakes I realize that there isn’t much more work that would go into making a quick or blitz puff pastry.
“Make puff pastry!?”
I hear people screaming and running for the hills; because, I think, most people believe that puff pastry is something that it far too complicated to make-- it requires a ton of really, really expensive ingredients and equipment, and so that’s why we only buy it from the store.
Remember this: anything in baking and pastry, especially staples like puff pastry, were once made by someone’s grandmother in her kitchen. Probably long before anyone started doing it “professionally.” If they could do it, you can do it.
But…I’m going to cheat, because it’s summer. It’s hot, and I don’t have a need to impress anyone at the present moment. So I’m going to make a blitz puff. It’s a cross between pie dough and puff pastry. Traditional puff pastry requires you to make a piece of lean dough and a large piece of butter. Blitz puff just takes the butter and adds it at the beginning in big chunks.
Blitz puff will not rise as much as traditional puff pastry, but it will still be light and crispy (do not under bake it) and is great for tart shells, palmiers, and make a really nice replacement for a traditional shortcake making a much lighter dessert. You could even get crazy and do a summer play on chicken pot pie, by making a nice salad with grilled chicken, fresh peas, carrots, and a creamy dressing then top it with a piece of crisp puff pastry.
Give it a try. It’s not hard and the leftover dough will freeze nicely and keep for quite a long time. Remember that just about anything you buy in the grocery store can be replaced with something homemade and will give you a great sense of accomplishment and usually tastes better too.
Blitz Puff-Pastry
- 7 oz Bread flour
- 7 oz cold butter (unsalted)
- ½ tsp Kosher salt
- ¼ cup cold water
Method
- Cut butter into ½ in. cubes butter should be cold and pliable, but not soft or too hard (before cutting you can scale it up and then wrap it in plastic and knead it. It should be cold to the touch and flex without cracking).
- Put flour and butter in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a dough hook on slowest speed. Once butter is coated with flour, immediately add water and salt.
- Continue to mix until the dough just barely comes together in a ball. Shape dough into a square, cover with plastic wrap and chill for 10 minutes.
- After chilling roll dough to ½” inch thick rectangle. Fold like a letter, flip, and roll to a ½” rectangle again. Fold and roll two more times (this is called “turning”). If the dough starts getting rubbery and elastic cover and rest in the fridge for about 5 minutes, but if you’re not too rough with it you’ll not need to rest it.
- At this point you can actually use the dough as desired. I, however, like to rest it a bit, because the butter will begin to melt during the rolling process.
- Use as you would regular puff pastry. Since this is a quick version, you will not get a huge rise, but it’s a nice replacement for the store bought stuff.
Aaron Salvo is a trained pastry chef. You can read more of his work at his blog http://sugarcoated.typepad.com/
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