BAKING PROJECT

This is another quick meal you can prepare, provided you have ready-rolled puff pastry in the freezer.  Thaw the frozen pastry about 1 hour before using.   The topping variety is endless, here I am using a can of tuna, fried with onions and eggs.

The ingredients:

Peel the puff pastry, lay it down and let it thaw at room temperature.  Here I have to cut off the edges since the ends were cracking as it has been sitting in my freezer not properly wrapped.

Prepare the tuna topping.  Heat about 2 tablespoon of oil in the frying pan and stir in the chili paste.  Stir for about a minute then add the  the onion, garlic and red chili slices.  Sauteed for a while and then  add the tuna.  Break it into small pieces , keep stirring and lastly add the oyster sauce.  Season with salt.  Mix well and remove from heat.

Preheat oven to 190C.  Lay one sheet of puff pastry and brush the whole sheet with beaten egg.  Lay a second layer on top of the first and glaze it with the beaten agg also.  For the third layer, cut the sheet into the shape below, leaving about a 1 inch border.  Glue it to the 2nd layer of puff pastry.

Prick the base with a fork.  Bake empty (without any topping)  for about 20 minutes or till it is golden and puffy.

It should look like this.

Remove the pastry case from the oven.  I sprinkle some mayo and tomato sauce on the base then top with the tuna.  Make  small indentations and break the eggs into them.    Bake for another 10 or 15 minutes.   Garnish with the chopped parsley.

You can find ready-rolled puff pastry in supermarkets like Cold Storage.  Or be creative and use other types of pastry such as paratha, tortilla wraps etc.  Of course you cant beat homemade but sometimes in our busy lifes,  it is nice to be able to whip up a great looking and tasty meal in a short time.

Happy new year 2012 to all the readers out there -

Keep the smile, leave the tear,
Think of joy, forget the fear,
Hold the laugh, leave the pain,
Be joyous , coz its new year!

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 .