Flaky Pastry

Reproduced with permission from Treats from Little and Friday by Kim Evans.
Published by Penguin Group NZ. Copyright © Kim Evans, 2012.

Making our pastry from scratch gives us the point of difference to many other cafés and results in people queuing out the door on the weekends for our pastries. This pastry is time consuming to make, so if you lack patience you may prefer to buy yours. Two things are key to good pastry. It must be kept cool; so no hot hands or equipment. Plus, the longer you leave your pastry to rest in between rolls and folds, the flakier it will be. We make our pastry a day before we use it.

Ingredients

• 3 cups flour
• pinch of salt
• 450g unsalted butter, frozen
• 180ml iced water

Egg Wash

2 eggs

2 tbsp cream

Method

Sift flour and salt into a large bowl. Grate 180g butter into bowl and, using your fingers, work into flour.

Dice remaining butter into 1cm cubes and add to bowl. Lightly mix with your hands until butter cubes are coated with flour mixture.

Add iced water and mix with your hands until dough starts to come together. (The mixture will be studded with large lumps of butter and quite dry at this point.)

Tip mixture onto a floured bench and gently work together with your hands to form a rough ball.

Roll out to a 30cm × 20cm rectangle. With a long side of the rectangle facing you, fold both short sides to meet at the centre. Then fold in half again.

Wrap in cling film and chill in refrigerator for at least 2 hours, or ideally overnight.

Roll into a 30cm × 20cm rectangle and fold as before. Do this twice, then return to refrigerator for 30 minutes to rest.

Cut pastry in half. Roll each half out to 5mm thick to form two pastry sheets. This pastry does not keep and is best used within 24 hours.

Egg Wash

Place eggs and cream in a bowl and whisk until smooth. You can make as much egg wash as you need by using the same ratio of eggs to cream.