FRANCE: MILLEFEUILLE (NAPOLEON)

How can we travel through French cuisine without mentioning this fascinating dough that is puff pastry?

Up until our grandmothers’ generation, making puff pastry was an essential baking skill.

Nowadays, with all the available pre-made puff pastries that can be found in supermarkets, making your own puff pastry is often considered to be the realm of the domestic goddess.

When I first started cooking (when I was young and beautiful ;-), mastering the technique of puff pastry was like an mandatory rite of passage for going from simple cook to expert. Making this delicate dough used to take me at least half a day and sometimes more, with I admit, an obvious anxiety when facing this long and laborious process of turning and resting.

And then one day, I just stopped! The ready-to-roll dough has made it to my refrigerator and it saved a lot of family dinners after a hard day’s work. Whether for savory or sweet baking preparations, the pastry shop at my street corner has been my go-to place for fresh and delicious raw puff pastry.

Ingredients
For puff pastry

• 2 cups flour
• ½ cup water
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 cup dry butter or margarine , or 1 cup prepared butter (⅔ cup butter + ⅓ cup flour)
• ½ cup sugar (for the caramelization of dough when baking)
• A little extra water and flour to adjust if needed and to roll the dough
• Equipment needed
• 1 dough cutter
• 1 rolling pin
• 1 brush
• 1 small kitchen knife

For pastry cream (custard)

• 2 cups whole milk
• 5 egg yolks
• 1 vanilla bean , split in half
• 1 pinch salt
• ⅓ cup sugar
• ⅓ cup flour
• ¼ cup cornstarch
• 1 knob butter
• 1 Tbsp rum optional

For marbling

• 2 oz. dark chocolate (70% of higher)
• 10 oz. white fondant
• 2 Tbsp apricot jam or honey

Instructions

1. Puff pastry
2. Place the flour on a work surface and make a well in the center.
3. Pour the water in the center and add the salt. With your fingertips, incorporate the flour via a delicate and circular movement. When the mixture has a smooth consistency while remaining liquid, bring the flour with the dough cutter back to the center. The flour will absorb the remaining liquid.
4. Bring everything back with the dough cutter by cutting through the dough and starting again until everything is incorporated. The dough cutter will allow mixing without developing the gluten, heating the dough or making it elastic.
5. The détrempe is soft, sticky and has no body. To the touch, it is cold which shows that it has not undergone kneading, therefore the development of gluten and elasticity is limited. Form a cross or a four-pointed star with the détrempe and keep a bump in the center.
6. Roll each branch of the cross with the rolling pin and place the dry butter on the center bump. The détrempe and the dry butter should have more or less the same consistency.
7. .........................................

for full recipes please see : www.196flavors.com

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