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