The September 2009 Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Steph of A Whisk and a Spoon. She chose the French treat, Vols-au-Vent based on the Puff Pastry recipe by Michel Richard from the cookbook Baking With Julia by Dorie Greenspan.
And boy what a challenge this was. I'm not sure about how challenging the challenges usually are, but let's just say it was good that my mom was willing to help me out with this one. While the end result of Vols-au-Vent (how the heck do you pronounce that....seriously....students reading this, let me know) was quite good, there was a significant amount of stumbling - and laughing - going on in the kitchen.
TIP: you need to keep everything very, very, very cold. It makes it significantly easier to work with the pastry.
Alright, here we go. Also, I'm posting a lot of pictures so that my follower.... :) can easily re-create/remember the experience.
Puff Pastry Ingredients
2 1/2 cups unbleached all purpose flour
1 1/4 cups cake flour
1/2 tbsp salt (since we did the sweet version)
1 1/4 cups ice water
1 lb very cold unsalted butter
Note: During the process my mom and I kept wondering why we needed two different types of flour, and I promised her that for my follower I would find out. So I did a quick google search and found this website. It seems like the short of the long of it is that different flours have different proteins which make gluten. The higher the protein, the tougher the product you will have. So since puff pastry is supposed to be light, we need the flour with the lower protein level. I know, I know. This has a ridiculous amount of science behind it, but I figured I better follow the instructions since they said I have to. But for the record, that website also said that only finding certain flours should not keep you from baking, that it will turn out just fine if you use all-purpose flour instead of cake or bread or whatever kind of flour it says.
Continuing on...The instructions said you could use a food processor in mix together the first four ingredients, but we didn't have one large enough. So mom went to work the old fashioned way with a pastry tool. It worked just fine. Once you have it mixed, roll it into a ball, slash the top, wrap it into a damp towel and place it into the fridge for at least five minutes (the cold thing, really important).
Meanwhile, place the butter between two sheets of cling wrap, mash them together, and "roll" it into a 1" square. It's a mess. You can do it. You might want to chill the butter again at this point before you incorporate it into the dough.
Once everything is very cold, roll out the dough into a 10" square (we were very precise being the first time we did this). Place the butter in the middle of it and fold the flaps over the butter.
Copied from the instructions given to me: "To make great puff pastry, it is important to keep the dough cold at all times. There are specified times for chilling the dough, but if your room is warm, or you work slowly, or you find that for no particular reason the butter starts to ooze out of the pastry, cover the dough with plastic wrap and refrigerate it . You can stop at any point in the process and continue at your convenience or when the dough is properly chilled."
Seriously. Seriously. Can you tell that I really really suggest that you keep everything cold, chilled, frigid, etc?
Alright, now for the TURNS. You will need to turn the dough 6 times over all. A turn basically means that you roll it out to 24" long rectangle, fold it like a letter into thirds, turn it the other way, and start again. The roll our and fold it one turn. You can maybe make it two turns before you need to chill it again, but if not, chill it between each one. It will need to be chilled between a half hour to an hour. We had time constraints, so we pushed it, but it gets really difficult to work with un-chilled dough.
Once you finish the turns and chill it for at least an hour (I fudged it and put it into the freezer for less time...but I don't suggest doing that), roll it out and cut out the shape you want your vols-au-vent to look like. Example: if you want it to be a circle, for each "vent" you need two circles.
One is going to be the base and other you are going to cut out the middle and place on top for a filling. Make sure to poke (but not all the way through) holes so that the middle won't puff and you can fill it easily. Place the pastries on parchment paper and put another sheet on top. Bake in a pre-heated oven at 400F for 10-15 minutes, or until they are golden brown. Take of the top parchment sheet, lower the heat to 350F and bake for another 15-20 minutes.
Voila! You have your puff pastry after only 267 hours of work. Now it is time to get it filled with something delicious.
Filling
Mom and I chose to fill the pastry with my great great aunties French Cream Filling that they used for their own cream puffs. We also thought that their should be some color and interest, so we decided to top that with sugar glazed strawberries and blueberries. Doesn't that sound festive?
Ingredients
3/4 cup sugar
3 tbsp starch
2 egg yolks
3/4 cup cold milk
3 cups warm milk
1 1/2 tbsp butter
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
Mix sugar, flour, cornstarch an dsalt. Beat egg yolks and combine with cold milk. Add dry ingredients forming a smooth paste. Add warm milk slowly and cook until thick, stirring constantly to avoid sticking. Cook 5 minutes after it thickens. Add butter and when cool add vanilla.
***Since in my aunties recipe the filling gets baked and oozed out, it doesn't need to be very thick. If we were to do this again, we would put in more starch so it would thicken up some more.***
We then made a simple syrup (boiled a 2:1 ratio of sugar to water) and dipped the fruit in it. You don't have to do that, but we thought it would look prettier if the fruit has a sheen to it.
After that, make sure the puff pastry is cool and fill with the cream and top with the fruit.
So they are not going to be the prettiest vols-au-vent in the challenge, but we were pretty happy with the finished results - especially since this was our first time.
While mom and I had quite the enjoyable time making these together, we decided that store bought puff pastry is just as good as what we made...and less messy and time consuming. And if I think about it, I do believe that Ina always suggests to just get store bought puff pastry. She is the professional. I'll have to listen to her. :)
Other tips - if you want to be a daring baker, invite someone else into your kitchen. It makes it sooo much more fun. You have to figure that neither of you know what is going on, and it is much more fun to be oblivious, ignorant, stooped with friend rather than alone.
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