Puff Pastry Dough

I love puff pastries! All those flaky layers!!! I love making the dough with this quick recipe. I believe homemade puff pastry dough tastes better than the store bought puff pastry sheets. Give it a try!

Puff Pastry Dough:

3 cups (15 oz) all-purpose flour
1 1/2 tablespoons sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 1/2 cups (3 sticks) cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/4-inch cubes
1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon ice water
2 teaspoons lemon juice

Add the flour, sugar and salt to the bowl of a large food processor and pulse a few times to combine. Add about one quarter of the the butter cubes and process until the pieces of butter are dime-sized, about four 1-second pulses. Add the rest of the butter to the bowl of the food processor and process just to coat the butter cubes with flour, about two 1-second pulses.

Transfer the mixture to a large bowl.  Combine the ice water and lemon juice in a small bowl. Add about half of the liquid to the dough mixture and toss just until combined. Continue to add the liquid, a little at a time, until the dough will clump together in your hand if squeezed.

Turn the dough onto a work surface - it will be dry and shaggy, so don't be worried.  Mine still had some very large pieces of butter as well. Now, you want to fraisage the dough.  It might sound complicated but it just means that you take a small portion of the dough and, using the heel of your hand, push and drag the dough forward using a short, brisk motion. After I performed the fraisage on that portion, I found it easiest to use my bench scraper to lift the dough from my work surface.  I transferred it to the end of the board I was working on, and grabbed the next section of dough from my parchment paper.  You want to repeat this process with all of the dough. When you've finished, gather the dough into a ball.  Repeat the fraisage process a second time.

After you fraisage a second time, shape your dough into a rectangle measuring roughly 8x4 inches.  Wrap it in plastic and refrigerate for an hour. Place the dough on a lightly floured work surface and roll it into a 15x10-inch rectangle. Fold the dough lengthwise into thirds, like a letter. Turn the dough so a narrow end is facing you.  Loosely roll up the dough starting from that narrow end and moving all the way down the length of the dough. Press the dough into a rectangle measuring 6x5-inches.

Repeat the process of rolling the dough into a 10x15-rectangle, folding it into thirds, rolling it up starting at a narrow end and forming into a 6x5-inch rectangle.  If at any time the dough becomes too sticky or soft to work with, you can cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate briefly. When you've finished the process of rolling and folding for a second time, you've successfully made puff pastry!  You do want to wrap the dough in plastic and refrigerate for at least an hour before using it.  You can keep the dough in the fridge for 2 days or, pop it in the freezer for up to a month.