by Julia Child
First aid for cracked shells
If a partially baked shell develops a small split or crack, paint the area with beaten egg and patch with raw dough just before filling and baking. If sides seem thin or weak, you may paint with beaten egg and patch or strengthen them with a strip of raw dough, or you may fill the shell by no more than ⅓ so sides will not be under any strain during baking.
Freezing and leftovers
Baked shells may be wrapped airtight and frozen; it is wise to put them in a protective container of some sort. Leftover dough may be frozen and used again or combined with more of the same dough when you make another batch.
REFERENCE CHART FOR PASTRY DOUGH FORMULAS
Flour: Measure by scooping dry-measure cups into flour and sweeping off excess with straight edge of knife. Sift only after measuring.
Butter: Regular unsalted butter (not whipped butter) usually has a firmer texture and less water content than salted butter; we recommend it.
Liquid: Always start with the minimum amount of liquid called for, and add more by droplets as needed. The warmer and softer the butter, the less water the mixture will absorb. Hand-made dough, therefore, absorbs less liquid than machine-made.
DESCRIPTION USES FORMULA
ENTRÉE PASTRIES
1) Pâte Brisée Ordinaire
Regular pastry dough with less butter than the following, therefore easier to roll and form For general pie crusts, plain quiches, turnovers, meat mixtures 3½ cups (1 lb.) flour
9 ounces (2¼ sticks) butter
2½ ounces (5 Tb) shortening
2 tsp salt
¼ tsp sugar
¾–1 cup iced water
2) Pâte Brisée Fine
Finest pastry dough—delicate texture, fine flavor, fragile (Volume I, page 139) For fancy appetizers and tartlets, rich quiches, and the best quality of pre-baked shells 3½ cups (1 lb.) flour
11 ounces (2¾ sticks) butter
3 ounces (6 Tb) shortening
2 tsp salt
¼ tsp sugar
¾–1 cup iced water
3) Pâte Brisée à l’Oeuf
A light, crisp dough Especially for shells and cases molded and baked on upside-down forms, and for turnovers 3½ cups (1 lb.) flour
9 ounces (2¼ sticks) butter
2½ ounces (5 Tb) shortening
2 tsp salt
¼ tsp sugar
¾–1 cup liquid (1 egg plus necessary iced water)
SWEET PASTRIES
Pâtes Sucrées
Any of the previous dough formulas For the same uses Same formulas except for salt and sugar proportions, which should be changed to: ⅛ tsp salt 5 Tb sugar
4) Pâte Sucrée aux Jaunes d’Oeuf
Less rich than #2, finer texture than #1 and #3 For baked tarts and tartlets, and pre-baked shells 3½ cups (1 lb.) flour
9 ounces (2½ sticks) butter
2½ ounces (5 Tb) shortening
⅛ tsp salt
5 Tb sugar
¾–1 cup liquid (2 egg yolks plus necessary iced water)
5) Pâte Sablée—Pâte Sèche
Sweet cookie dough, crisp and buttery; the more sugar you add the more difficult the dough is to handle For cookies, sweet tarts and tartlets, and especially for pre-baked shells 4⅓ cups (20 ounces) flour
9 ounces (2¼ sticks) butter
2½ ounces (5 Tb) shortening
8 to 18 Tb sugar
¼ tsp baking powder
3 eggs
1½ tsp vanilla extract
⅛ tsp salt
PTÉ DOUGHS
6) Pâte à Croustade—Pâte à Pâté
An excellent pâté dough that is also good to eat For pâtés and meat pies that are molded in raw dough either in the spring-form pâté mold, or in a baking dish 3½ cups (1 lb.) flour
5½ ounces (11 Tb) butter
3 ounces (6 Tb) lard
2 tsp salt
¾–1 cup liquid (4 egg yolks plus necessary iced water)
7) Pâte à Croustade à l’Envers
A pâté dough that will hold its shape and is also good to eat For pâté cases that are partially baked on upside-down forms before being filled with meat mixtures and baked; also for free-form pâtés en croûte 4⅓ cups (20 ounces) flour
7 ounces (1¾ sticks) butter
3½ ounces (7 Tb) lard
2½ tsp salt
1–1¼ cups liquid (2 eggs plus necessary iced water)
FRENCH PUFF PASTRY
Pâte Feuilletée
French puff pastry, pâte feuilletée, is literally what the French title implies: hundreds of leaves or layers of dough separated by hundreds of layers of butter. A piece half an inch thick puffs up 4 to 5 inches in the oven and is unbelievably light and tender to bite into. With almost as many uses as it has layers, puff pastry is the dough for vol-au-vent and Napoleons, for coqs en pâte, gigots en croûte, and all kinds of turnovers, tarts, pie toppings, first-course pastries, and luxurious cocktail tidbits. It dresses up the simplest store-bought cheese mixture, can add the final flourish to the grandest platter, and since it freezes perfectly for several months, puff pastry is tremendously useful to have available on those occasions when you need something fast to assemble that looks impressive.
If you enjoy working with your hands you will find it is the most fascinating of doughs to make, and if you want to acquire a facility in pastry, pâte feuilletée will teach you all the tricks. It most definitely takes practice to perfect, but when you have mastered puff pastry you will find it such a satisfying and splendid accomplishment you will bless yourself for every moment you spent learning its techniques.
THE TWO KINDS OF PUFF PASTRY
The classical, best-quality puff pastry, pâte feuilletée fine, contains equal parts of butter and flour, is made in a rigidly traditional manner, and you must count on 6 to 7 hours from the time you start it to the time you can form and bake it. This is what you use for vol-au-vent, patty shells, and fine desserts such as that most wonderful of almond tarts called the Pithiviers. However, it is not at all necessary to be so grand for cocktail appetizers, cheese-filled cases, leg of lamb baked in a crust, Beef Wellington, and a host of other delicious items. For these, and in fact for most of your puff pastry needs, simple puff pastry, demi-feuilletée, is very good indeed and can be made in half the time. Because it is so much easier to make, we suggest that you start your career on demi-feuilletée, and when you get around to the classic method it will then seem like only a variation on a familiar theme.
EQUIPMENT
Although you can mix pastry on a wooden table and roll it out with a broom handle, you will find it easier to make when you have a pastry marble and a good rolling pin. This is particularly true for puff pastry.
A pastry marble
The smooth, cool surface of marble is ideal to roll dough upon and scrapes clean easily while you work. A piece that can slide in and out of your refrigerator will be a miraculous help to pastry making in hot weather. You can usually find ready-cut polished marble in furniture stores; you can sometimes pick up an old marble table- or bureau-top in a junk shop; or look up marble suppliers in the telephone directory. The minimum size to consider is ¾ inch thick and the size of your refrigerator shelf, which is around 14 by 28 inches for the standard home-size model.
Rolling pins
You should have a heavy pin with a rolling surface at least 14 inches long; 16 to 18 inches is preferable. You will probably have to try a restaurant supply house to find a decent pin, because a broom handle is certainly far more efficient than the ridiculous toy (A) that passes for a rolling pin in many household supply departments. The French pastry chef’s pin (B) is of polished boxwood, 18 inches long and 2 inches in diameter; stores selling Italian cooking equipment often have a similar model of lighter wood.
The French Tutove pin (C) is sometimes available in import stores; its cannellated surface is designed especially for distributing the butter evenly throughout the dough when you roll puff pastry or cr
oissants. The American-made pastry-chef’s pin (D) is of polished hardwood and has ball-bearing handles; this fine, heavy pin is usually available only in restaurant supply houses.
FLOUR NOTE
The following recipes call for a mixture of all-purpose and cake flour, a combination always available and one that is used by many pastry chefs in this country. The nearest American approximation of French household pastry flour, “type 55,” that we have discovered is a mixture of ⅔ unbleached pastry flour (not to be confused with cake flour) and ⅓ unbleached all-purpose flour. This combination has a lower gluten strength than the all-purpose and cake mixture, and it is easier and faster to handle because it needs shorter rest periods. However, unbleached flours, and especially unbleached pastry flour, are not to be found in most retail markets. Actually the cake and all-purpose combination, though slower to work with than either French flour or its American approximation, produces the lightest and puffiest pastry. (You may substitute French household flour or the ⅓–⅔ pastry flour and all-purpose flour combination in the following recipe.)
KEEPING COOL AND RELAXED
You will have very little trouble with puff pastry when you remember that you must keep the dough cold and that you must let it have the rest periods it needs.
Because of its high butter content, puff-pastry dough begins to soften as soon as you remove it from the refrigerator, just as butter softens. When you leave it too long at room temperature it becomes limp, sticky, and utterly impossible to work with until you refrigerate it again. Thus, if at any point your dough becomes limp and soft, stop where you are, refrigerate the dough for 30 minutes, then continue. Do the same if the dough retracts after rolling, or if it turns rubbery and refuses to extend itself; this means that the gluten in the dough is over-activated from having been rolled out, and the way to calm it down is to stop rolling and let the dough relax in the refrigerator for an hour or two. Most of the troubles most people have with puff pastry spring from unchilled dough and over-activated gluten.
PTE DEMI-FEUILLETÉE
[Simple Puff Pastry—Flaky Pastry—Mock Puff Pastry]
For the many recipes like turnovers, toppings for meat pies, meats baked in a crust, appetizers, and so forth where you want a flaky, light dough, demi-feuilletée can be ready for baking in 3 to 4 hours. The pastry consists of an initial dough made of flour, water, salt, and a little oil, which acts as a tenderizer; this is pushed out into a 16-inch rectangle that is spread with softened butter. Then the rectangle is folded into 3, making a sandwich that has 3 dough layers and 2 butter layers. Rolled out and folded again 3 more times, as sketched in the recipe, the layers build up in geometric progression to make 72 layers of butter after the fourth fold. When the pastry finally goes into the oven, each of the many layers of dough puffs up between the layers of butter and the pastry bakes into a light, airy delight to both eye and tongue.
For about 1 pound of flour, making 2½ pounds of dough, enough for 2 of the 6- by 16-inch covered entrée pastries, or about 3 dozen of the cornets, or horns
1) La détrempe—the dough mixture
2¾ cups all-purpose flour and ¾ cup plain bleached cake flour, measured by scooping dry-measure cups into flour and leveling off with straight-edged knife
A 3- to 4-quart mixing bowl
A rubber spatula
A ½-cup measure to reserve flour for Step 2
¼ cup tasteless salad oil
2 tsp salt
1 cup iced water, plus a tablespoon or so more if needed
A 2-foot sheet of waxed paper
A plastic bag
Blend the 2 flours together in the mixing bowl with the rubber spatula. Remove ½ cup and reserve for Step 2.
Stir the oil into the flour and mix thoroughly with rubber spatula—you could use an electric mixer for this, but it hardly seems worthwhile. Then stir in the salt and the water, cutting and pressing ingredients firmly into a mass with spatula and then with the cupped fingers of one hand. Lift massed parts of dough out of bowl and place on pastry marble or board. Sprinkle unmassed bits of flour with drops of water in bowl; press together and add to dough.
Press dough firmly and rapidly into a cushion shape. Do not try to make a smooth surface; it will smooth out later. Consistency should be pliable, though not at all damp or sticky.
If you are in a terrible rush you can complete the next 2 steps now, but the dough will be easier to handle if you sprinkle it lightly with flour, wrap in waxed paper, slip it into a plastic bag, and refrigerate it for 40 minutes to an hour.
2) Turn 1—adding the butter, and the first fold—1er tour
12 ounces (3 sticks) chilled unsalted butter
A pastry scraper or stiff broad spatula
The ½ cup flour reserved from Step 1
When you are ready to roll out the dough, beat the butter with a rolling pin to soften it.
Smear out with scraper or the heel, not the palm, of your hand. When partially softened, work in the flour and continue until butter is perfectly smooth and of easy spreading consistency but still cold. If butter is not supple enough, you cannot spread it over the dough; if it is too soft it will ooze out as the dough is rolled. Chill briefly if you have softened it too much.
Lightly flour the dough and your hands. Push and pat the dough out, in front of you, into a rectangle 16 to 18 inches long and about 8 inches wide. Dough is being pushed rather than rolled so that you will activate the gluten as little as possible for this first operation. (Dough will be very soft and sticky if you have not chilled it.)
Using a scraper or stiff spatula, spread the softened butter over the upper two thirds of the dough leaving a ⅛-inch unbuttered border all around. The lower third is unbuttered.
Fold the dough into three as follows: fold the bottom (unbuttered) third up to the middle.
Fold the top (buttered) third down to cover it, just as though you were folding a business letter. You have made 2 layers of butter and 3 of dough.
Rotate the dough a quarter turn counter-clockwise so the top flap of dough is to your right, as though it were a book you were about to open. Dough will still look rather rough and the spotty damp patches are oil; all will smooth out by the final turn.
3) Turn 2—the four-layer fold—2me tour
In the second turn, you will roll out the dough and fold it so that it makes 4 layers. During the roll, be sure top and bottom of dough are always lightly floured and that your rolling surface is always scraped clean, to prevent dough from sticking; lift dough and slide it about between rolls to make sure.
Starting about an inch in from the near edge of the dough, roll your pin rapidly to within an inch of the far end, extending the dough as you roll. The rolling movement is a firm, even push away from you at a 45-degree angle. You are aiming for as even a rectangle of dough as possible; after several rolls you wish it to be 16 to 18 inches long and about 8 inches wide.
Even the sides of the rectangle with the side of your pin when necessary and occasionally roll across the rectangle to widen it. Sprinkle any breaks in the dough with flour. (If you did not chill the initial dough it will look messy and soft at this point; do not worry.)
Fold the top and the bottom edges of the rectangle so that they meet at the center of the dough.
Fold them together again, as though you were closing a book. Now you have completed the second turn, and have 8 layers of butter sandwiched in between 9 layers of dough.
So that you will remember that you have now made 2 turns—you may decide to freeze the dough at this point—press 2 depressions in the top of the dough with the ball-ends, not the nails, of your fingers.
Wrap the dough in waxed paper, slip it into a plastic bag and refrigerate for 40 to 60 minutes (or overnight if you wish) until dough is much firmer and the gluten has relaxed; it will then be easy to roll out for the final 2 turns.
4) Finishing the dough: turns 3 and 4—after a 40- to 60-minute rest
Unwrap the chilled dough and flour it sparingly top and bot
tom. If it is cold and hard, beat it evenly and firmly but not too heavily with your rolling pin to start it moving: beat crosswise and lengthwise, and keep the even rectangular shape.
Then roll dough rapidly out into a rectangle 16 to 18 inches long. (Again, if dough is very cold and you have not beaten it sufficiently to soften the butter, the sides may split when you roll out the dough. Do not worry if this happens; remember to beat it a little longer the next time.) Fold rectangle of dough into three, again as though folding a business letter and as diagramed in Turn 1. Rotate dough so top flap is to your right, book-opening fashion; roll again into a rectangle and fold into three. You now have completed the fourth turn, and have 72 layers of butter. With the ball-ends of your fingers, make 4 depression marks in the surface of the dough. Wrap and chill for at least 2 hours to firm the butter and to relax the gluten. It is then ready for forming and baking in any way your recipe directs. (You may, of course, give the dough 2 more turns after it has chilled, tripling the layer count twice again to a total of 648; this is called for only rarely, however.)