Puff the magic pastry

Last Sunday Dan and I were walking through the King Soopers and he said that he needed to pick up some puff pastry.  I turned to my Droid and quickly googled puff pastry from scratch, where I discovered this website.  I saw that I had all of the ingredients and suggested that I make the puff pastry myself as one of my baking experiments.  What I didn’t realize in the store was that puff pastry takes about 36 hours to make.  Yes, hours.  Oops. 

The first day was a piece of cake.  I threw some butter, flour, salt and water into our food processor to create a detrempe (a fancy way to say flour and water paste, but don’t I sound oh so culinary by using it?).  I felt successful as I placed the dough in the fridge to let it rise overnight.  When I came back to the dough the second day to incorporate additional butter, I ran into problems.  I couldn’t get the dough to be the right size, and the butter kept seeping through it.  I almost threw it away in frustration so many times, but I finally decided to let the dough chill overnight for the second time and see how this experiment would turn out.

A few days later, the night arrived when we were going to make the puff pastry.  I dutifully rolled it out as Dan prepared the toppings for the Mushroom, Butternut Squash and Gruyere Tart.  It wasn’t until the pastry came out of the oven the first time that we saw that it was actually a success!  I couldn’t believe how tall it got!

Dan piled on the toppings and we put the dish in the oven for a second time.  The dish came out and smelled amazing.

We took our first bites and both paused to fully appreciate the buttery, flaky and crunchy crust.  The decadent crust melded with the rich mixture of toppings to create a perfect dish. 

To be honest, I cannot believe I made puff pastry and it worked!  I mean, puff pastry!  The thing I love most about baking is that simple ingredients like flour, butter, water and salt can be transformed into the flaky, crispy treat.

These recipes can be found through the links below:

The Mushroom, Butternut Squash & Gruyere Tart Recipe from Food & Wine

The Puff Pastry Recipe from About.com