Rough Puff to Apple Turnover

[Merlin5]

I had a go at making puff pastry from scratch. Well technically quick puff pastry although by the end it took almost as long as full blown puff pastry. I think I did 6 turns in the end.

It's definitely not the easiest thing to do. I followed Paul Hollywood's cheat puff pastry recipe and froze and grated most of the butter. It's come out ok but lots of room for improvement. Stopping the butter from getting warm and seeping into the dough is the major challenge which would stop it from puffing nice layers, so I was constantly putting it back into the fridge for 30 minutes between rolling and folding. Not sure how much of my handling of the dough or any extra flour that I forgot to brush away has affected the final result, but I think it did affect it a bit.

I've made a test apple turnover. Not bad, but was only in the oven for just under 20 minutes because I felt any longer and it would start to get hard and brittle. Reasonably flaky, tastes nice but perhaps a tad dense. I'm also going to make some with a whipped cream and jam filling, and maybe a Nutella filling.

Here's some pics.

The first roll with some chilled butter already incorporated that I mixed in with my fingers.

Adding half of the frozen butter to 2/3 of the dough and then folding each end like a book.

after several rolls, folds and turns I ended up with a smooth thinner dough.

Wrapped it and chilled it again for 30 minutes

Then I sliced a portion of that pastry and rolled it thin to prepare for apple turnovers. I cut up some granny smiths and cooked them till soft with some brown sugar, cinnamon and water.

Sealed the inside edges with eggwash, folded into a triangle, crimped edges with fork, eggwashed the surface, sliced a a couple of airholes, forgot to sprinkle sugar on top, and then baked.

Yum

 

[One More Solo]

Not bad at all! One of those things I’ve never tried as ready made stuff is pretty good, but I would like to.

 

[Merlin5]

Not bad at all! One of those things I’ve never tried as ready made stuff is pretty good, but I would like to.

Yep, worth trying for sure. If nothing else, it's a nice skill to learn and quite therapeutic.

Puff pastry is notoriously difficult to get right by all accounts and I can see why now I've tried it! I've got more of my dough to use up, but I know I can do it better and get more flakiness. I think I developed too much gluten, and could have used more butter. It's ok but has turned out something between shortcrust and puff. I think next time I'm going to try this guy's method and recipe, he explains proper puff pastry very well and the process seems quicker and easier than so called quick puff pastry. It takes a bit of time and effort, but you can get a ton more turnovers or other pastries from it for less cost than buying them. The only real expense here is the butter, which will only cost between about £1 to £2 depending how much dough you want to make, and you can freeze it for months as well.

 

[Merlin5]

I have to say that after feeling a bit disappointed with the results after all my hard work, I've had better success today and realised that my puff pastry is better than I thought. I cut another chunk of my chilled dough and made some cheese and tomato slices and wow, they're pretty awesome! I think the main reason was that if any eggwash gets onto the side edges, it stops it from puffing up.

So I made sure not to get any on the edges and I also made sure the edges were properly trimmed to allow separation of the layers. Not all sides puffed properly, but most did. It was much more flaky today. Very simple to make. Just roll the dough thin, cut into any shapes and sprinkle grated cheese on and slices of tomato and bake for 20 minutes. Delicious.

 

[jpaul]

the recipe you had used before for the Portugese custard tart pastry looked a lot more like regular non-rough puff pastry, and you had seemed to execute it efficiently creating many laminations, so I would have been tempted to try that again for the apple turn overs ?

 

[Merlin5]

the recipe you had used before for the Portugese custard tart pastry looked a lot more like regular non-rough puff pastry, and you had seemed to execute it efficiently creating many laminations, so I would have been tempted to try that again for the apple turn overs ?

I'm experimenting with different methods and just generally getting practise and finding out which I find the best to use. Actually, although the portugese tarts were tasty, I went and bought one from Lidl to compare and mine were nowhere near as soft and flaky, mine were too crunchy and quite hard. I actually liked that, but they became quite tough to bite into and not really representative of a true portugese tart pastry.

I know Raymond's recipe is a better way I could have tried it, with a slab of cold butter enveloped in a star shaped dough.

I would say this pastry I just made is definitely flakier and softer than the one I made for the custard tarts. I post on a baking forum and have been recommended to try this method by a pro chef for making the portugese tarts. https://www.meilleurduchef.com/en/recipe/pasteis-de-nata.html

It's a reverse puff pastry with the dough encased by butter. I also watched a video by Bruno Albouze who uses reverse pastry and he reckons it produces much flakier results.
If I like it, I'll use it as a base for all puff pastries.