Puff pastry, also known as pâte feuilletée, is a flakey pastry made by laminating dough with butter. It’s often used in traditional French pastries like palmiers, mille feuille, and tarte tatin. But you can also use it for quick pastries like apple turnovers! Frozen sheets of puff pastry are easy to pick up at the store, but I never like how store-bought puff pastry tastes. I’m sure you’ll agree that after trying this quick homemade puff pastry recipe, you’re never going back to store-bought again!
If the idea of making puff pastry from scratch intimidates you, I use a shortcut method to make it quick and easy. Essentially, it combines the technique of making pie dough with the lamination of puff pastry. This is referred to as a rough puff pastry method, and it doesn’t require a food processor, a butter block, or several rounds of chilling and rolling. This method is shockingly easy and tastes so much better than anything pre-made!
A reader, Bekka, says: “I’ve been using your recipe for quite some time now, and I love it…I never noticed before making homemade, but that store bought puff pastry left a weird almost shortening-like after taste in my mouth. Thank you for sharing this recipe.” ★★★★★
Table of Contents
Key Ingredients
You only need a few ingredients to make homemade puff pastry! You can find the full list of ingredients with specific measurements in the recipe card below.
Butter — since this recipe already calls for salt, use unsalted butter to prevent over-salting the pastry. Cold butter is an absolute non-negotiable for the perfect puff pastry. You need cold butter to easily grate it and to form the layers within the pastry. Warm butter can melt into the dough and won’t create distinctive layers, resulting in a less flaky pastry. I’ve had many readers ask about swapping the butter for margarine or lard, but I recommend sticking with real butter for the best flavor.
Sugar — a small amount of sugar helps the pastry brown in the oven. It does not produce very sweet puff pastry, so don’t worry if you need to use it for savory recipes!
Cold water — while cold water might not seem that important at first, it is a key ingredient to keep the dough cold so the butter doesn’t melt.
What Is Laminated Dough?
Lamination can sometimes scare bakers away from homemade pastry recipes, but it is actually quite a simple process. It involves repeatedly rolling and folding the dough with cold butter to create several thin layers. During baking, the butter melts and steams in the hot oven, creating air pockets that help the dough puff up, resulting in big, flaky layers. Think of the layers in a croissant or turnovers as an example!
American Butter vs. European Butter: Which Is Better?
While you can technically use either, European butter will yield much better results. During recipe development, I tested different types of butter in the puff pastry and found quite a contrast in flavor and flakiness between them. European butter has a higher fat content and less water than American butter, resulting in a more tender, puffier, flakier puff pastry.
As you can see in the image below, American butter created a flaky pastry, but it turned out paler and puffed less than the European butter pastry. The European butter produced big, impressive layers and became more golden in the oven thanks to the higher fat content in the butter.
Pro Tips For Making This Recipe
Be sure to grate the frozen butter with a box grater. The butter is grated to make the laminating process faster. If you spend too long trying to roll the dough, you risk the butter getting warm and melting into the dough instead of creating defined layers. Do not cube or roughly chop the butter instead of grating it, or you risk tearing the dough when rolling it out.
If your kitchen is warm, keep a close eye on the ingredients and dough. You can place your mixing bowl along with the flour in the fridge for 15 to 20 minutes before starting the dough to help keep it cool when you mix it together. When you start to roll and fold the dough, if you feel the dough is getting too warm at any point (it may feel very soft, sticky, or greasy from the butter warming up), put it back into the fridge to chill it for 5 to 10 minutes before continuing.
If the dough feels rubbery or starts shrinking during the laminating process, wrap it back up and place it in the fridge to rest for 10 to 20 minutes. The gluten in the flour will start to form as you work the dough, and sometimes, this will cause the dough to spring back and be hard to roll. A short rest period allows the dough to relax so you can easily continue rolling it out.
How To Make Puff Pastry
1. Place butter in the freezer for 10 minutes, then grate it using a box grater.
2. Combine the grated butter with whisked flour, sugar, and salt.
3. Add 6 tablespoons of cold water to the mixture and fold the mixture until it clumps together.
4. Knead the dough and then shape it into a 1-inch thick square. Wrap in plastic wrap, then chill for an hour.
5. On a lightly floured surface, start to laminate the dough by rolling it out into a ½-inch thick rectangle, then fold it into thirds.
6. Turn the dough 90 degrees and repeat rolling, folding, and rotating 3 more times. Fold the puff pastry dough back into thirds, wrap it tightly with plastic wrap, and chill for at least 2 hours or up to 2 days before use.
Puff Pastry Recipe
Video
Equipment
- Rolling Pin
- Whisk
Ingredients
- 1 cup unsalted butter cold (227g)
- 2 cups all-purpose flour (240g)
- 1 tablespoon sugar (12g)
- ½ teaspoon kosher salt (2g)
- 8 to 10 tablespoons cold water (120-150 mL)
Instructions
- Place butter in the freezer for 10 minutes.
- In a large mixing bowl, whisk together flour, sugar, and salt.
- Grate the frozen butter into the flour. (Dice the remaining end of butter that you can’t grate.) Toss the butter into the flour mixture with your hands until well coated.
- Drizzle 6 tablespoons of water over the mixture and begin folding the mixture together until the mixture starts to clump together. Continue adding water a tablespoon at a time until a loose and crumbled dough forms. (It should hold when squeezed.)
- Gently knead the dough a few times in the bowl until a cohesive mass is formed. Shape into a 1-inch thick square and wrap tightly in plastic wrap. Chill for 1 hour.
- On a lightly floured surface, roll the chilled dough into a 1/2-inch-thick rectangle. Fold the dough in thirds like a letter. Turn 90 degrees. Repeat rolling, folding, and rotating 3 more times.
- Fold back into thirds, wrap tightly, and chill for at least 2 hours or up to 2 days, or placed in a freezer bag and freeze for up to 2 months.
Notes
- Only use as much flour as necessary to roll out the dough. If you are over-flouring your surface, you will incorporate more flour into the dough than needed. Too much flour leads to a tougher pastry and prevents the layers from sticking together when laminating.
Nutrition
Ways To Use Homemade Puff Pastry
Use this homemade puff pastry just like you would store-bought. This recipe yields 1 sheet or half of a standard 17.3-ounce box purchased from the store. Some of my favorite dessert recipes using puff pastry are pastelitos de guayaba and cream cheese danishes (add fresh fruit or jam for fun flavors!). You can also roll out the puff pastry, sprinkle it with cinnamon sugar, and twist strips of it together before baking. You’ll end up with delightful little golden brown cinnamon twists!
For savory options, try my asparagus tart and potato tart. Puff pastry also makes a great alternative topping for chicken pot pie.
How To Freeze Puff Pastry Sheets
To freeze homemade puff pastry sheets that are ready to use, just like their store-bought counterparts, roll out the laminated dough into a ¼-inch-thick sheet. Place it on a sheet of parchment paper, folding about 1 inch of the paper over one end of the dough. From that end, roll it up into a tight log. Wrap the dough log in plastic wrap and freeze it in a freezer bag for up to 3 months.
If you decide to freeze the dough after folding it into thirds like a letter, as directed in Step 7 of the recipe card, you will need to roll it out once it thaws before use.
Both freezing methods work great, but rolling it into a sheet before freezing just saves you a step and a little time when you need to use the puff pastry.
Thawing: Thaw puff pastry in the fridge for several hours or overnight. Unroll it carefully and give it a light roll again with a lightly floured rolling pin just to flatten the sheet. It’s now ready to use as directed in your recipe!
Frequently Asked Questions
Once you have completed the sets of folds (lamination), you can roll the dough into any shape! If you roll it into a circle, I recommend trimming the edges to make a perfect round shape and to expose the layers for a more even rise.
Follow the recipe if you are using it to make something specific. Otherwise, puff pastry typically bakes up best at 425°F. This is hot enough to steam the butter and produce good flaky layers but not so hot that it burns on the outside before it’s cooked through.
If you’ve tried this puff pastry recipe, then don’t forget to rate it and let me know how you got on in the comments below. I love hearing from you!
