Homemade Puff Pastry Recipe for Napoleon Cake and Palmiers

Step-by-step recipe

1. Puff pastry is very sensitive to the temperature at which it is made, so plan ahead for a way to chill it quickly. Also have a lidded container or cling film ready. Sift the best-quality wheat flour without fail. Take the butter out of the fridge in advance so that it softens but does not turn runny.
   
2. Divide the flour into portions: three cups for the plain dough and one cup for mixing with the butter. Pour most of the flour into a large bowl. Pour 180 ml of boiled water at room temperature into a glass. Dissolve 3-4 grams of salt in it, plus citric acid on the tip of a knife; it is believed to reduce the chance of the layers tearing. Break the egg into the flour and pour in the water.
   
3. Knead a stiff dough. Be sure to knead until completely smooth. The dough should be firm, but still easy to roll out with a rolling pin. Let the plain dough rest for 20-30 mins. To do this, put it on the table in a lidded container or wrap it in cling film. The gluten in the flour needs to swell.
   
4. Chop the soft butter with a knife. By the way, a mixture of flour and butter is often called “chopped” or quick dough, and it is often used as a simple substitute. When baked, the layers form in islands, more like small pockets that imitate layers. Add the last cup of flour to the chopped butter and mix everything thoroughly.
   
5. Next, shape the butter and flour into a square or rectangle to seal inside the plain dough. We did it very simply: we lined a flat plate with cling film, put the butter and flour on it and wrapped it tightly. With our hands we shaped a square slab about 3 cm thick. Soft butter is pliable, so there were no difficulties. Put the butter in the fridge to firm up.
   
6. The plain dough has rested and is ready to roll out. It is very convenient to do this on a silicone mat, a wonderful tool that dough barely sticks to. With a chilled rolling pin (it is best to keep it in the freezer when not in use), roll the plain dough out in the shape of a four-leaf clover. Make the centre about twice as thick as the petals. The size of the centre should match the square of butter you formed.
   
7. Place the chilled square of butter and flour in the centre of the rolled dough. It is firm, but can still be rolled out; the fat has simply “set”. One by one, cover the butter with the petals of plain dough, sealing it in. You should end up with a square of dough with the butter inside. Puff pastry is a sort of “closed” sandwich.
   
8. Try to avoid any tears and make sure the butter is completely covered. This is extremely important: any hole or tear is a way for the butter to squeeze out. If you find a tear or a visible edge of butter, cover it with dough. Put the prepared slab on the table or mat. Everything is ready for the first rolling.
9. Ideally the room temperature should be 15-17 degrees, so the butter stays pliable the whole time. Roll with a cold rolling pin, very gently and without pressure. The butter inside the plain dough warms up quickly. While rolling you can feel that the butter inside is slightly “alive”. When the layered block has doubled in area and is 1-1.5 cm thick, fold it in half. This is how the many layers are formed.
   
10. For better layers, chill the dough in the fridge from time to time. Never chill it too much, or the butter becomes hard and crumbles when rolled. Crumbs of butter will tear the layers of dough. Take the dough out of the fridge and roll it out once more. Then fold it in half again and roll again. It is worth letting the dough rest for 10 mins after each fold; this improves the texture and keeps the layers intact.
    
11. If you like, you can keep rolling until you are happy with the number of layers. We usually fold and roll 6-8 times, which is enough. This gives a good dough, perfect for Napoleon cake layers. It is important to roll smoothly to prevent the layers from tearing. If the dough tears somewhere and butter shows through, sprinkle that spot generously with flour and hide it when you fold again.
    
12. To keep the dough from drying out while it chills, cover it with cling film or a slightly damp towel. In fact, you should not strive for the maximum number of layers. That usually leads to torn layers and poor rising during baking. Too few layers is not good either: the butter will leak out of the dough, it will not soak into it, and the pastry will turn out tough. For a cake or palmiers, a hundred layers is enough.
    
13. After rolling, puff pastry can keep in the fridge for a couple of days until you decide to bake it. To bake, cut a piece of the prepared dough with a very sharp knife into the number of layers you need for the cake. A blunt knife can crush the layers and the cake layers will turn out flat. On the cut edge of the dough you can see all the layers, take a look.
    
14. You can roll the dough for the layers out a little more, very lightly, to fit the pan, but do not press it with your fingers. Be sure to prick it with a fork in several places. Spread the dough on a baking tray and bake at a fairly high temperature of 220-240 °C. Baking time is about 15 mins, checking by eye. Avoid shaking the oven while baking, as the dough may sink.
    
15. The finished baked puff pastry layers look a little dry until they are spread and soaked with cream. You can stack them and trim the edge with a knife to show the layered structure and to even them out to the shape of the cake. When my daughter and I made the cake, we simply cut off the excess and trimmed the stack into a circle. The trimmings can be dried a little and used as crumbs to sprinkle on the cake.