Quick and easy puff pastry – all the taste and texture without the palaver

Puff pastry is my favourite dough to make. Classic puff pastry – which calls for butter to be spread between layers of dough, then repeatedly rolled out and folded six times, to create many layers – takes several hours to make because the butter/dough block needs to rest between each “turn”. The results, if it’s made correctly, can be ethereal.

Rough puff, also called blitz puff, takes much less time, about 90 minutes, and only about 20 minutes of that is active work – the rest of the time the dough is resting in the fridge. Of course, after making the dough you still need to let it rest in the fridge before rolling it out for whatever recipe you’re using it in, but the quality is so much better than any commercial puff pastry. While rough puff isn’t as nicely layered as classic puff, it’s still flaky and light.

Rough puff pastry

If you’re making this in the summer, make the kitchen as cool as possible: crank up the air-conditioner, if you have one. If the butter starts to melt at any time in the process, refrigerate the dough/butter until it solidifies.

A metal dough scraper makes it easier to lift the dough from the work surface, at least in the beginning when the ingredients are crumbly and dry.

If you like, double the ingredients and make a larger batch of puff pastry. When it’s ready, cut the block of dough into two even pieces and wrap them separately. Refrigerate one block for immediate use and freeze the rest for later.

250 grams cold, unsalted butter
225 grams plain (all-purpose) flour, plus extra for rolling
¾ tsp fine sea salt
60ml ice water

Cut the chilled butter into 24 roughly even chunks then put them on a plate and freeze for about 10 minutes.

Put the flour and salt in a bowl and mix to combine. Put the chunks of slightly-frozen butter into the bowl and mix so the butter pieces are coated with flour. Transfer the ingredients to the bowl of a food processor and mix briefly, until the butter pieces are about the size of a hazelnut. Add the ice water and pulse for a couple of seconds, then turn the mixture onto the work surface. The mixture will not be cohesive at this point – it will look crumbly and dry. This is fine; do not add more water.