How to Make Puff Pastry, According to the Fearless Baker

I’ve always had a thing for dough. Bread dough, pie dough, biscuit dough...I love diving into a big bowl of ingredients and coming out of it with floury hands and something delicious to show for my efforts. This is why, despite being one of the more complicated recipes on my long list of doughy loves, I adore making puff pastry. 

Puff pastry is made using a method known as lamination, where a block of butter is wrapped fully and sealed inside a dough. The dough then goes through a series of folds, where it is rolled out to a certain thickness and folded over onto itself. The first fold creates a series of layers (thin, alternating layers of dough and butter). The subsequent folds increase these layers, ultimately creating a versatile dough that can be used to make a huge variety of impressive desserts. (The dough for puff pastry can also be yeasted, which is then used to make things like croissants and Danish, and while the method is similar, this article focuses on a non-yeasted puff.) When the dough hits the heat of the oven, the moisture inside the thin layers of butter evaporate, creating steam, which creates the crisp, insanely flaky dough that is puff pastry. 

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