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    Monday, July 25, 2011

    Puff Pastry Made by My Own Hand- Lets Make Pissaladiere - French Pizza

    I have been making lots of pastry recently but never really the elusive Puff Pastry.
    Its not really hard just takes time
    You need to allow at least 4-5 hours to go through the process.
    This recipe yields 500 gms completed pastry
    Only 2162 calories for the lot.

    Rachel Allen was demonstrating how to make this beautiful Pastry and she made Pissaladiere.
    The renowned French Pizza.
    I have been caramelizing a bunch of onions. This will be dinner tonight.


    200 gms Strong Flour
    200 gms Good Unsalted Butter
    Cold water with a squeeze of lemon juice
    You will have to judge how much water the flour will absorb try about 100 mls first and add little by little till you get the dough right.

    Make a dough with the flour and water
    When it has formed a ball
    Wrap in plastic
    and sit aside in the fridge for 30 minutes
    Meanwhile take the butter out of the fridge,
    Lay on plastic and bash it into a rectangle
    Wrap up, back into fridge till ready to roll
    On a lightly floured work bench
    Ro;; your dough into a rectangle
    Place bashed out butter on top
    Brush any excess flour off the pastry
    Fold edge into middle
    Keeping g the edges neat

    Turn the pastry
    And roll out to a long rectangle again
    Brush off excess flour again and fold edges into center as before
    Neaten the edges and make a dent in it this show you are on your first round of rolling
    Wrap and back into fridge for 30 minutes
    So we now have it out of the fridge and start to roll again on a lightly floured bench
      Rememberalways roll away from you, turn to do other end
    Brush excess flour off
    and start to fold again
     Bring the back end into the centre

    and turn around and roll again.
     Once again when rolled brush excess flour and fold once more into 3
    Put 2 dents into it to let you know you have passed the 2nd roll out.
    Back into fridge another 30 minutes
    I decided to go for the 4 roll out option
    so after it had been through the 4th turn

    I let it rest and then rolled it out.

    Its is so silky quite unlike frozen pastry. I just loved working with it.
    Not so good for the Lo-Cal but
    if it is your main meal... a 90 gm disc = 389 KCals

    If you are frugal with your topping, its not a bad meal and bloody tasty at that.
    So I am going with the Pissaladiere the Southern French Pizza
    Very simple I do add a little sugar to help the caramelisation
    Caramelised Onions
    Peel and slice 2 large onions
    2 tablespoons olive oil
    Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
    1 teaspoon sugar

    Just gently saute the onion in the olive oil
    Season with S & P and sugar
    This will take about 20 minutes
    Set aside


    Black Olives stone removed
    Anchovies
    Red Roasted Pepper
    Thyme leaves
    Sprinkle of dried oregano
    1 egg beaten with a little water
    What can be simpler than that

    Roll out the pastry and cut into disc about 10cms
    Brush with egg wash. just to the edges don't go over, this could stop the layers from rising

    Top with caramelised onions
    Place anchovies, black olive and roasted red pepper
    Pre-heat oven to 200C

    Line a baking tray with baking paper
    Bake about 15 minutes, if not golden enough
    You can pop back in for a few more minutes.

    Let cool a little before serving
    Lovely

    They are a bit skew whiff
    But tasted amazing
    I have frozen some more discs, for future lunch/dinner
    So if you have some time try this pastry worth every fay calorie
    I also made 2 vol au vent just for practise
    Nice snack for Dale later today

    2 comments:

    Unknown said...

    There's nothing scrumptious than a homemade goodies.

    Anonymous said...

    Good on you making your own pastry, the topping sounds yum.