German Puff Pastry

Ingredients

• 1000 g flour
• 250 g water
• 400 g butter (or margarine)

Steps

1. Mix flour, water and 50 g of the butter to make a dough. Knead well.
2. Roll dough into a ball. Make a deep cut through the middle, and a second cut at a right angle again through the middle. Roll out the resulting four ends to about half the thickness of the base. It should now have the form of an equilateral cross.
3. Cream butter until soft. Spread onto the middle part of the cross, forming approximately a cube.
4. Take each end of the "cross", lift it, and fold it on the top of the butter cube, literally wrapping it up like a gift. Cover in plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight.
5. Take dough and start rolling it out, always rolling in one direction, until about 10 cm long. During the whole process, use as little flour as possible, and gently remove excessive flour with a brush.
6. Perform a so-called "simple tour": take one end of the dough and fold it two-thirds of the dough's length toward the other end. Now, take the other end and fold it the opposite way. You should now have three layers of dough.
7. Roll the dough out again, moving the rolling pin along the folded sides (i.e. rotate the dough 45 degrees).
8. Repeat the folding and rolling process up to 5 times. The more often you do this, the more layers you will get, and the higher the dough will rise once baked.

More recipes with flour or butter

Adapted from “German Puff Pastry” in the Wikibooks Cookbook by its contributors, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Reformatted for this site; this page's recipe text is shared under the same license.