The human I’m interested in is you, not flushing your money down the drain.

I realize I spent a little more time on croissants and danish than puff pastry in my last little prattle, and I don’t want to give the impression that they are the same.

They are not.

Puff Pastry is way easier.

Yeah I shit you not, and since there’s no yeast in it, you don’t have any proofing (rising) time before you use it.

It’s flour, water, salt, and butter.

You literally cut in large chunks of butter into your flour, add water, and roll it out.  That’s it.  It’s folded over more times than the other two doughs to give it more layers, but for about what, 20 cents worth of ingredients you can have puff pasty like BOOM.  In your house.  All the time.

Now think about how much you pay for it at the store, and do the math on that mark up.  They’re making out like bandits.

Why?  Because puff pastry seems scary.

The reason it puffs like that and looks all super complicated is because of the butter, a substance we all love and know well.

There are three different methods of leavening, and in this case, the dough is mechanically leavened by the butter during the baking process.

English?  When you put puff pastry in the oven, the milk solids in the butter “boil” and release steam.  This puffs your dough.

That’s seriously it.

So let’s take it one step further and explore Beef Wellington, which as everyone knows is tenderloin wrapped in puff pastry.  It’s usually pretty expensive right?

You’re paying extra for:

1.  A smaller piece of meat.  The serving size is usually 5 oz on those since the pastry poofs and gives it “size” on the plate.  You would comparatively have at least a 6 oz, but probably more like 8 oz cut if you were eating the tenderloin sans pastry.

2.  About 20 cents for the pastry ingredients, and ohhh, maybe 30 for duxelles (the mushroom mixture on top).  A mixture that is made by throwing mushrooms and shallots in the food processor and then cooking it down.

3.  2 minutes of labor searing the meat, 1 minute rolling the pastry out and cutting it, 5 seconds spreading the duxelles on the pastry, 15 seconds to wrap the pastry around the meat and mushroom mixture, and let’s go with a full minute to decorate the top.

4.  Lack of ability to have it cooked to your desired doneness, since you can’t temp it inside the pastry.  Most restaurants will only cook it to one temperature so the cooking process is standardized.  If they cook them to order for you somewhere, they’re taking an educated guess and that’s about it.

I know my theme across this baking board has been that these products aren’t as complicated as they look, but in this case it really hits home.

De-mystifying puff pastry for me was a wake-up call of perceived value vs actual value, and that we’ll throw our money away when something looks complicated or scary.

Dessert and pastry are where restaurants make a lot of their money back, being able to charge 7-8 bucks for product that costs under $2 to make in most cases.  I’m not saying don’t order dessert, just make an educated decision when you do 🙂

With that said, let me be clear:

When you come to our restaurant, your asses better be ordering dessert.