The power of puff

New week, new topic, new oohs and aahs! This week in class we tackled pastry - puff, pie and tart (and multiple derivatives of each). Puff held a natural fascination for the banker in me. By folding the dough on itself six times as part of the lamination process, you're creating a compound interest effect, with the end result being 1,458 flaky layers compressed into each 2.5 millimetre sheet of pastry. This lamination provides the magic to turn this:

into this in the oven:


Incidentally, for those wanting an added reason to salivate, I should tell you the above is a little French delicacy known as a pithivier, which we filled with pistachio-almond frangiapane and raspberry jam. We actually made it with an inverted puff, which has 50% more butter than regular puff as you enclose the dough in the butter, rather than the usual practice of folding the butter into the dough. Why have one heart attack when you can have two?!

Also in the French pastry theme, we made:

Jalousie, stuffed with more pistachio paste and brandied cherries:

Napoleons, filled with piped buttercream - the class favourite:

Tarte tatin:

Palmiers - my personal favourite:


Apple galettes:

Pistachio and cranberry galettes:

And fruit flans - you can see everybody's individual decorating style shining through:





My mission for the weekend is to investigate French citizenship. First stop San Francisco, next stop Paris!