Best Vol Au Vents Puff Pastry Recipe | Simple. Tasty. Good. (2024)

FAQs

What pastry is best for vol-au-vents? ›

Roll out a block of puff pastry to a thickness of 5mm/¼in. With a pastry cutter, cut out the vol-au-vents to the size you want. Remove the excess pastry. This can be rerolled to make more vol-au-vents.

Pastry should be at room temperature for rolling (to make it more pliable), but chilled before baking (so the buttery layers remain separate). A hot oven allows the layers to rise, but needs to be monitored to prevent burning. When handling, a floured worktop is essential, as is a sharp knife for cutting to shape.

Vol-au-vents are puff pastry cases that have a hollow center. They're baked until golden and cooled until crisp. Then the shells are filled with just about any filling you can dream up.

You can brush an egg-wash glaze (1 egg plus 1 tsp. water) over the Puff Pastry to create a rich, golden sheen when baked. Use an egg wash to help seal filled pastries and connect Puff Pastry pieces: mix 1 egg plus 1 tsp. water, brush between layers, then pinch or press together.

Egg wash is the most reliable but it can be very thick and sticky. Milk wash will go on more evenly but it can soak into pastry and make it weaker. Melted butter works nicely after the crust has set but it can make the crust greasy and weaker.

One way to prevent soggy bottom pastry is to blind bake the pastry – This means partially or completely bake the pastry before adding the filling. Also, avoid over-filling your pastry.

The trick is to work large pieces of cold butter into dry ingredients and hydrate it all with ice cold water (as if you were making pie crust). Sometimes bakers grate butter into the mix or use a food processor. There's lots of ways to make rough puff pastry.

Heat is the enemy of Puff Pastry—it handles best when cold. So avoid working with it on hot, humid days, in a stifling hot kitchen or next to your oven.

Your puff pastry may fail to puff for several reasons. Warm pastry: Your pastry should be cold, cold, cold going into the oven. It's worth reiterating: Cold butter equals flaky layers. If your pastry is warm, the butter can easily leech right out during baking.

The terms full, three-quarter and half are used when describing the amount of fat in the pastry. Full has equal weight of fat and flour, three-quarter has three-quarters of the weight of fat to flour, and half has half the weight of fat to flour. More fat makes the pastry softer to eat but reduces its height.

What do the French call puff pastry? ›

So where does puff pastry come from. Well it comes from France, where it is called pâte feuilletée. It was invented in 1645 by Claudius Gele, a pastry cook apprentice. He wanted to bake an improved bread for his father who was sick and was on a diet of flour, butter and water.

Put the pastry squares onto a baking tray, spoon in the fillings and warm in the oven for 8-10 minutes or until the filling is bubbling. Serve warm or cold.

The first golden rule of making pastry; keep the ingredients, the bowl and the hands as cool as possible.

Always preheat your oven for a minimum of 15-20 minutes before baking, because Puff Pastry depends on even heat to rise and puff. Place pastries 1 inch apart. If you want a flaky thin and crispy pastry that's not very puffy, prick the unbaked Puff Pastry all over with a fork, which lets steam escape while baking.

Yes, the pastry usually needs to be rolled out, cut, and shaped, but when handled too much, the cooked pastry can turn out tough instead of light and crisp. Follow this tip: To ensure the cooked pastry is light and crisp, be efficient when working with the dough and handle it gently and as little as possible.

Like puff pastry, phyllo is used for both sweet and savory dishes. Perhaps the most famous dish made with phyllo is spanakopita or the famed baklava found in Greece, Turkey, and other Middle Eastern countries.

While this results in a very light and delicate product, it is often time-consuming and labor-intensive. Rough puff pastry is prepared by incorporating butter or fat in the form of golf-ball size chunks into the dough, instead of the entire slabs used in classic puff pastry.

Butter puff pastry is puff pastry made with butter instead of the vegetable oil and no sugar. Whether you use normal puff pastry or butter puff pastry is entirely a matter of personal preference. Sweet puff pastry is puff pastry made using sugar.

Inverted puff pastry is the same, except the butter is placed on the outside to start with and the dough is encased, rather than the other way around. For this method the butter has flour added to make it easier to roll.