Sep
12

Laminated dough

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Last Friday was spent at Pastrypro Kitchen learning how to make laminated dough – danish, croissant and puff pastry.  I did learn this before about 12 years ago,  can’t believe how long it has been..   I’ve tried making croissant at home a few times, I can tell you that hot croissant straight from the oven taste so good.   To make it taste so heavenly you will have to use butter,  the problem with butter is it becomes soft too fast.   Anyway, during class we use Margerine which makes life a little easier (but doesn’t taste as good).

Laminated dough is basically the layering of butter/ margerine with the dough, which is rolled and folded a few times to create a very flaky texture.  It is quite impossible for me to explain everything in writing, if you are interested try watching this video on making croissant.   Danish and croissant basically uses the same dough, the difference is that Danish has a filling and croissant is plain.  Puff pastry is more flaky,  the dough is different as it contains no yeast.

The picture above shows how to make danish and croissant.   First we made the dough which consist of high protein flour (bread flour), yeast, egg, salt, sugar, milk powder, butter and water.   The dough is mixed, rolled and let to rest for about 20 minutes in the fridge.  Then the margerine block is placed inside the dough.

The dough is rolled until it becomes a rectangular shape with a thickness of about 4mm.  We then use the Single Fold Technique.   To make croissant and danish, we have to repeat the Single fold 3 times.  After each fold, the dough will be kept in the fridge for about 30 minutes to ensure that the margerine doesn’t melt.   You can’t make these in a hurry.   After the final fold, the dough is rolled, measured and cut into squares.

The shaping is done.  It needs to sit for another 1 hour until double its size.   Egg wash and then baked for 20 minutes at 220C.

Puff pastry’s dough ingredients are flour, butter, salt, water and vinegar.  We followed the same initial process as Danish, but using the Book Fold technique, creating more layers.  The folding is also done three times.

The filling for the puff pastry was hazelnut and red bean, but you can use any sweet or savoury filling as you wish.  Check out this website for more puff pastries recipes.

The process of making laminated dough sounds simple but it is actually very tiring.. probably because we were making all things at once.  At home, you could freeze the dough at any point and continue later.

In the end, most of us were queing at the dough sheeter machine, coz we didnt’t want to roll no more.. ( oh you can’t see me, I was the first in line.. hehe)

See how easy it is using this human invention, I did ask if there is any mini version for home use..  the answer is negative :(  ( Eh, pasta maker can ke ? )

It was a great class, after attending I am more confident in making croissant and puff pastry at home.   Many thanks to my sifu Chef Steven.   I promise I will practice after this teacher :)

Herman reulens says:

Hi Yasmin,
Did you ever tried using a pasta maker for croissant?

karimah says:

saya juga mencari kelas pastry ini,tetapi tak tahu dimana nak belajar.kar rumah ada juga try tetapi tong sampah saja yang makan kalau ada kelas yang o.k.saya ingin serta juga.Terima kasih.