Flaky Pastry Dough Recipes

A blueberry pie recipe. Your great grand mom's one-of-a-kind apple pie recipe enveloped in childhood memories. A pâte brisée. A custard tart. A flaky puff pastry. In order to master the making of all the eatables mentioned above, you have to begin with mastering the recipes for flaky pastry dough first. So, let us see how to make this dough from the following recipes and find out how to turn you into a dessert diva!

To make this buttery pie dough perfect for all breakfast pastry recipes, you need the following ingredients,

• Butter, 2 sticks (unsalted variety, chilled and hardened)
• All-purpose flour, 2½ cups
• Vegetable shortening, ½ cup (chilled solid)
• Ice water, ⅓ cup plus 3 tbsp.
• Granulated sugar, 1 tsp.
• Salt, 1 tsp.

Procedure
Run the flour, salt and sugar through a sieve and then commingle them thoroughly using a rubber spatula. Now, cut the butter sticks into ¼" bits and add them quickly to the flour mixture.

Now, cut the bits further into 1 centimeter pieces using a pastry blender, before they start to melt and immediately add the shortening to this butter-speckled flour mixture. Again use the blender to chunk the shortening up and to uniformly distribute around the mixing bowl.

Keep using the blender on this mixture until you are left with a dry powder that is not lumpy. You have to keep the butter and shortening from melting in order to get this and after you have this, sprinkle ⅓ cup and 1 tablespoonful of ice water into the powdery concoction.

Now, using the sleeker, sharper side of the spatula, moisten the mixture uniformly and tiny ball formations will take place. Press the dough down with the flat surface of the spatula and if you see that the globules are sticking together, then the water quantity added is sufficient. Otherwise, use up the rest of the two tablespoons.

Mix in the excess water with cutting motions and then press the dough down with you knuckles until the dough cleaves together and resists separating out. Now the not-so-smooth-looking dough must be halved, each pressed into circular, flattened disks and then enwrapped tautly in cling film. Refrigerate this for a minimum half hour up to 2 days.

When you plan to roll the dough out, you have to do it on a cold surface such as a chilled stone turntable. Best thing about this recipe? Well, you just have to swipe some water to make the dough stick again if you happen to rend it while rolling.

Well, the ingredients are more or less the same. But it's just a basic difference in the technique that you need to follow. You will need,

• All-purpose flour, 2 cups
• Ice water, ⅔rd cup
• Butter, 16 tbsp. (unsalted variety)

Procedure
Commingle 14 tablespoons of butter and ¼ cup flour to derive a pasty mixture. Flatten this paste out on a cold marble top into a ½" thick rectangle and cover with a dome-shaped metallic cover and refrigerate for half an hour.

In another mixing bowl, blend together the rest of the butter, ice water and remaining flour thoroughly along with ¼ teaspoon of salt to make a dough called the détrempe which you need to knead for 60 seconds or so, cover and refrigerate for half an hour. After that flour a board lightly and roll out the elastic détrempe on it.

It should be a centimeter thick rectangle. Place the first smaller and thicker dough rectangle on the détrempe in a manner that you can fold the ends of it around the smaller dough like an envelope.

Now roll this envelope into a centimeter thick rectangle and then fold thin in thirds like you would a business letter. Now roll in the opposite direction and fold in thirds once more. Then place this in the fridge for half an hour of cooling and follow up the rolling and folding in thirds, twice after that and refrigerate again. This will give you 729 layers of alternating dough. Preheat the oven to a high 450° F before placing this layered dough in the oven to get the perfect puff pastry ever!

So, now you have the two basic flaky pastry dough recipes that will help you get better culinary results in no time. If you go a little wrong the first time, do not give up. Practice makes a man perfect and that is totally true for the above methods.