the.com/puff pastry
Butter and dough lied to in 240 layers until it confesses in the oven.
means A light, flaky, many-layered pastry made by repeatedly folding butter into dough so it puffs up into delicate, crisp sheets when baked.
from 'Puff' is simple old English onomatopoeia for a short burst of air or breath, applied to the pastry because of how dramatically it rises and billows in the oven. The technique itself — repeatedly folding and rolling butter into dough to create hundreds of thin layers — is generally traced to French kitchens, where it was refined into the laminated pastry (pâte feuilletée, literally 'leafed' pastry) we know today, though exact origins and early claimants are murky and partly legend. 'Pastry' itself comes from 'paste,' via French 'pâte,' rooted in Latin 'pasta' — the same ancestor that gave us noodles.
- layer count
- folding creates up to 729 layers of dough
- rise mechanism
- steam from butter puffs layers apart, no yeast needed
- origin dispute
- claimed by France, Denmark, and medieval Arab cooks
- fat ratio
- roughly equal parts butter and flour by weight