Daring Bakers – Homemade Puff Pastry and Vols-au-Vent

The September 2009 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Steph of A Whisk and a Spoon. She chose the French treat, Vols-au-Vent based on the Puff Pastry recipe by Michel Richard from the cookbook Baking With Julia by Dorie Greenspan.

It’s time for true confessions:  with all the baking I do, I had never before made puff pastry from scratch.  Oh, I’ve made laminated doughs for Danishes, but never just plain old puff pastry.  And it had been on my to-do list for a long, long time.  And that is one of the reasons I stick with the Daring Bakers (or they stick with me is more like it!) despite my hectic schedule – I get to challenge myself and bake things I’ve been putting off.  So, thank you, Steph!  I love your blog, and I’m so grateful that you chose this . . .

. . . because it exceeded my wildest expectations.  The pastry was delicious and the rise was fantastic, much better than what I’ve been able to achieve with commercial pastry.  This could be due to the fact that I used Kerrygold Irish butter, which has the consistency of a thick fudge, and a higher fat content than American butter.

And making the puff pastry and vols-au-vent (the little cup you see in the photos) was sooooo easy.  Now I’m asking myself why I waited so long!  Most of all, though, it confirmed for me that my two favorite things to work with are pastry and bread.  Turning and rolling out the dough, patting it like a baby’s bottom . . . very peaceful and meditative for me.  Now baking cakes, not so much.  Or cookies.  But pastry and bread . . . .

First things first, though.  I cut the salt in half because I knew it would be too salty for me (most things are).  All went well in my 80 F kitchen until the fourth turn, when all the butter started to come through the dough.  At that point, I thought my goose was cooked and that I would be posting about my gigantic failure.  So, I popped the dough in the refrigerator overnight, then got to work the following day.  I worked quickly before the butter had time to melt, and I kept putting the pastry back in the refrigerator whenever I had the faintest inkling that it was getting too soft.  I decided to make square vols au vent, not because I am particularly creative, but because I couldn’t find my round pastry cutters.

AND IT PUFFED!  Magically, beautiful, IT PUFFED! I filled the vols au vent with some soft scrambled eggs with chives which turned out to be a great choice.  I loved it, my husband loved it, and Gus loved licking the plate.

The one thing that I will do differently in the future is bake the puff pastry at a higher temperature – I had a lot of butter pooling on the baking sheet, but that did not seem to affect the rise at all.  And be sure to check out the Julia Child and Michel Richard video demonstrating how to make puff pastry. (Please be aware that the oral ingredients Richard gives out are a little different than the recipe, because he used pastry flour. I used the recipe.)

I’m so proud of myself. And it’s amazing how often our barriers are purely mental or emotional.  One barrier down, many more to go!

Recipe at this link, but check out Steph’s blog and the Daring Bakers blogroll!