Cheats Puff Pastry Recipe from The Great British Baking Show (2024)

FAQs

What is the secret to puff 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.

Rough Puff Pastry is an easier way to make a true puff pastry and is often called or known as a 'cheats' version of puff pastry. Large knobs of butter are mixed through dough and the dough is then rolled and folded to spread the butter through the dough.

The formula for the number of dough layers is 2(3n-1)+ 1 where n is the number of half-turns. The four-fold method quadruples the number of fat layers each time the dough is folded. Like the half-turn method there is one more layer of dough than fat after each 'half turn'.

They have to supply the show's food producer with every signature and showstopper baked recipe even if they don't make it to the end. "We get four weeks to come up with the recipes for the challenges, which didn't seem like a lot of time at all," 2014 finalist Chetna Makan told Digital Spy.

Adding an acid, the theory goes, stops the gluten in its tracks and rescues the crust from toughness. These same acid enthusiasts claim that stopping or at least hindering the gluten makes the dough easier to roll out, and may even prevent it from shrinking as it bakes.

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.

The three main types of puff pastry are FULL,THREE-QUARTER and HALF. The difference between them being the total fat content: FULL puff contains flour and fat in equal ratio. THREE-QUARTER puff contains 75% of fat to each pound of flour.

Use of Butter: Undoubtedly butter produces the most deliciously flavoured puff pastry and is recommended where first quality goods are demanded. Care must be taken in its handling, however. The paste must be gently rolled and preferably refrigerated between turns.

Use a marble pastry board to help keep Puff Pastry cold while rolling and cutting. Use a floured surface to roll out your Puff Pastry sheet, but be sure to brush off excess flour before filling, cutting or folding, since flour will prevent layers from sticking together.

The contestants are not paid for being on the show, though they are given a modest stipend so they can practice their bakes at home. But the stipend apparently doesn't go very far. If you need to practice your bake multiple times at home, the cost of ingredients can get surprisingly expensive.

What does The Great British Baking Show do with leftover food? ›

“The crew eats it. They'd know the best ones so they descend on them,” Kim-Joy tells the show's host, Jimmy Carr. Then Noel chimed in with his own slice of delicious behind-the-scenes gossip. Apparently, once the crew members have picked their way through the leftovers, Prue takes the remains home with her.

Although the show is massively popular in the United States, the program is based in Britain—it is called The Great British Baking Show, after all—and aims to find the best British baker, so you have to be a resident of the UK to compete.

The keys to ensuring that you get crisp, flaky layers from your pastry are concerned with temperature and handling. Pastry should be at room temperature for rolling (to make it more pliable), but chilled before baking (so the buttery layers remain separate).

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.