Matthew Woolen is a master pastry chef and has worked in a variety of Seattle restaurants, including gastropub Old Sage, Zhu Dang, and a gluten-free restaurant called Capitol Cider.

Matthew Woolen

Making puff pastry is a challenge, even for experienced bakers. In professional kitchens, puff dough is often made with pastry sheeters, but you can make beautiful dough at home that’s way better than any of the stuff from the freezer aisle with just a stand mixer, a little patience, and some elbow grease. The texture of baked hand-made puff pastry is incomparable: It’s crisp and super flaky but also tender and melts away almost as soon as you take a bite. It’s so tasty you won’t care that you’ve got a mess of flaky crumbs all over your plate, your floor, your clothes, and your face.Like <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/the-secret-to-mastering-croissants-at-home">croissant dough</a>, puff pastry (or pâte feuilletée if you want to get all French about it), is a <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/all-about-laminated-doughs">laminated dough</a> made by folding layers and layers of a block of dough (the détrempe) around layers and layers of a block of butter (the beurrage). When baked, the water in the butter converts to steam, creating space between each layer of dough, causing it to “puff,” while the fat helps to crisp the layers as the steam dissipates, yielding (good) puff pastry’s characteristic flaky, crispy texture. Making puff dough from scratch requires patience and precision. Our method uses two types of folds to create the distinct layers—a letter fold and a book fold—and we perform each of those folds twice. The puff dough is chilled and rested between each round of folds to ensure that the butter doesn’t get too warn and melt into the dough, which would cause it to bake up into a greasy, sad pie dough. It also ensures the gluten in the dough is well-rested, making it extensible and easy to roll out.Once you’ve made puff pastry from scratch, you’ll never want to go back to the frozen store-bought stuff. Use it for all kinds savory and sweet items, like Napoleons, pithiviers, mille-feuilles, tarte tatins, or our <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/cheese-claws">cheese claws</a>!

Puff Pastry (Pâte Feuilletée)