Rough Puff Pastry

It's been a while since I've posted here. Skinflint business has been busy and, although I've been doing a lot of cooking still, I haven't had time to blog about it!

Today I wanted to make sausage rolls to put in the men's lunch boxes for seeding. I had a little of the Pampas 25% Fat Reduced Puff Pastry in the freezer, but have had it in my mind to make some Puff Pastry, so that's just what I did.

I've been looking at a recipe on this site for Rough Puff Pastry and I thought that this was the way to go.
I honestly didn't think it would be that great, I'm not a good pastry maker. But, I was in for a pleasant surprise - it was wonderful! Certainly not difficult, maybe a little time consuming, but still not terribly hard to do.

I wanted to use my Thermomix as my hands are way too hot to try to rub in butter without it melting. The key to making great pastry is to have everything really cold.  Checking the recipe in the EDC, it appears that you throw everything in to the Thermomix and use the dough setting.
So, that's just what I did (I put iceblocks in the water to chill it) and it turned out to be too much for the poor machine. So I tipped half of it out and just did it in two batches.
Edited some time later to add: I don't know that this makes much sense. Today I made this again and just made two lots, halving the recipe. I've reduced the water from the original recipe as 125ml of water is way too much. I also don't throw it all in at once anymore and have added lemon juice as it helps the pastry to puff.

So, this is the edited version:

Here's the method:

250g flour
250g cold butter, cut into chunks
110ml icy water
squeeze lemon juice

Weigh the flour and butter into the Thermomix bowl or food processor.  Chop on speed 4 for around 5 seconds.  Add the water and process on speed 4 until it comes together. If there is still a little ice, take speed up to 8 for a second. Tip on to well floured bench or silpat mat and press together, using the mat to bring the mass into a rectangle shape.

Roll pastry out to a long thick rectangle, about 10 x 20, short end facing you. Fold the top 1/3 down and the bottom 1/3 up to meet in the middle. Fold the bottom over the top. This is called a book fold. Wrap in plastic wrap and place in the fridge for 10 to 15 minutes, longer in summer. (Putting it in the freezer is even better)
Place dough onto floured mat. Roll out again to make the rectangle shape, but this time 20 x 30cm.

Roll out again, keep flour on your bench all the time.  Try to keep the rectangle shape, push in the edges each time you do the book fold.

Repeat the above step three or four more times (refrigerating between to rest), constantly flouring the bench and the top of the pastry. Rest the pastry after the final roll for at least an hour, preferably overnight.
It should look like this with lots of layers.











When ready to cut shapes from pastry, roll out as evenly as possible, making it about 1mm thick, the same as ready rolled Puff Pastry.

Here's a few things I made with the pastry the very first time I made it. I've since perfected my pastry making and my pastry is a lot puffier these days.

Wow! Gobsmacked! Just like Puff Pastry!

On returning from the second trip to the farm, I cut the remainder of the piece into rectangles for Cream Matchsticks, my husband's favourite.

 Again! Amazing Puff Pastry!

So, since I originally started this in order to make sausage rolls, I thought I'd better do so!

I squished out the filling from 1 packet of  the wonderful butcher's sausages I buy from our local store into the Thermomix (a food processor would work). I then added 3 slices of bread, a large squirt of tomato sauce and some herbs from the garden - thyme, parsley and rosemary. Blitz for 30 seconds or so and use for sausage rolls.

I like to shape the filling and lay it on the pastry, so I wet my hands and take a large lump of sausage mine and roll it in my hands.

Bake sausage rolls at 200 for about 15 minutes. 

Yum!

Here's my most recent pastry that was used for snack sized pasties:

The pastry is golden and flaky and a stand out success. The pastie recipe is here

Enjoy!
Megan