Recipe tips: Decorating puff pastries and baking tips

Hello fork musketeers!

Today we'll be looking at some tips and tricks to making your puff pastry look even more amazing.

Pithivier

Let's start with some decorating basics.

The basics

So you've made your puff pastry, shaped it, stuffed it, did your eggwash and you're just about to put it in the oven - but hold on a second! There's a few more things to be done before you put it in.

In general, you want to do a decorative pattern on the top of your product. The decoration not makes your pastry beautiful but it also helps the pastry puff more. I mentioned on thursday that you need to cut the edges on all puff pastries. I didn't have a picture of it, but here is exactly what I mean:

Here is the pithivier. If you look closely are the edges, it's been cut on a diagonal. In this case, it helps create a nice pattern on the edges and will also help the pastry rise.

The pattern you do will depend on the overall shape of your pastry. For example, for pithivier the most common pattern is the swirl or a kind of "leaf" pattern.

The leaf pattern

Before you do the pattern, you want to do it after a coat of egg wash. Give it 15-30 seconds to dry a bit before cutting, otherwise your egg wash will just seep into your cuts and you won't see the pattern when it bakes.

Protip: Be careful not to brush egg wash where your dough meets. The egg wash acts like glue and it's hard to puff up if you're stuck onto something!

Just remember the "bottom" will become the top since it's going to be flipped. Fingerprints are not very attractive and it'll be harder to do the pattern with all those bumps and valleys.

 

As you do the pattern, use the blunt end of the knife and hold your knife at a very shallow angle. This will help you glide more easily through the dough. 

Protip: Mark the perimeter of your pattern. This helps you know when and where to stop.

In general, you'll want to do a few guidelines. In this case, do a swirly lines then fill in the gaps with more swirled lines until the pattern looks full. Then dock the entire pastry.

When you're done your pattern, now you can put it in the oven! Phew! Now we just wait until it's golden brown and delicious!

... Except not really.

Why "golden brown and delicious" isn't always a good indication of doneness

Well, it sometimes can be, but in general you need to look for more than golden brown. This is especially important in puff pastry where complete doneness will give you optimal buttery taste and texture vs. being under/over-baked. 

In the case with puff pastry, you've applied an egg wash to the top. In the oven, the egg wash is going to cook faster than the rest of your pastry. This means, in most cases, it's going to look golden brown and delicious before the actual dough is fully cooked through.

When you're baking puff pastries, you'll need to look at the bottom as well as how it feels. The bottom should be closer to golden brown and your pastry should feel solid and not smooshie. Depending on how you rolled out your pastry; whether the butter got too warm or the evenness of your dough will all play a factor into how long (or short!) your pastry will bake for. It might go beyond golden brown and almost dark brown in some cases, so just keep an eye on it as it bakes. In this case, mine was actually slightly undercooked and still needed another 5-10 minutes in the oven.

I hope this helps you guys make even tastier and beautiful puff pastry. Tomorrow is a free day at school and I will be doing some experiments with some of the recipes we've done so far.