Basic reipce - puff pastry

I will use this kind of pastry in the future as it is the basic recipe for a variety of delicious baked items such as croissants, cheese twists and other sumptuous and delicious baked goods, so I am posting this basic recipe of the puff pastry here. It is actually not hard to make, but it is rather a time consuming task to make a puff pastry fresh from the scratch. And once you make it fresh by yourself, you never want to go back to the puff pastry from the supermarket shelf.


Ingredients:

• 300 g all purpose flour
• 5 g sugar
• 5 g salt
• 270 g butter
• 150 ml water

1. Make the basic dough by mixing 250 g flour, water, salt, sugar and 20 g of butter with the mixer or by hand until you got a consisten ball of dough. Press it flat out so that you can get a 5 cm thick plate of dough, wrap it in plastic wrap and put it for approximately 20 minutes in the fridge.
2. Make the butter plate by mixing the 250 g of butter with the rest of the flour. To do this quickly (it should be done as quick as possible for the butter not get too warm, melt away too quickly) and effectively, cut the butter in pieces and quickly knead the butter and flour together to create a ball of butter flour mix. Press this plate in a 5 cm thick plate, wrap it in plastic wrap and put it away in the fridge for about 20 minutes.


3. Folding the butter plate by first rolling the dough plate on a well floured kitchen table (so it won't stick) into an equal square. Now take the rolling pin and you "break" the butter in. This is being done by pressing the softly on the butter plate with the rolling pin so that the pin sinks in and leaves a slight impression in the butter plate.
4. Then move the pin a few centimeters on and press again softly with the rolling pin on the plate. Do this all over the butter plate and later on you also have to do this again. This is actually in order to avoid that the cold butter will simply break when you roll it out and fold it which would have a negative impact on your dough in a later stage. 

Butter plate and dough plate from the fridge ready to be incorporated

5. After that you can roll the butter plate flatter to ca. 2 - 3 cm thickness. Place it on the dough and then fold the dough over the butter plate like an envelope like in this picture

Butter plate laid out on the dough base

Folding the dough around the butter plate

Dough folded completely around the butter plate

6. Now, as described before, press the dough "package" again with the pin before you roll it out a bit (not too thing please, the thickness should not be smaller then 1 cm.

Rolled out dough butter package ready to be folded in

7. Now, for the first "tour", we will have to fold the dough in as described in the pictures below. I will use the word "tour" again which will describe the steps 6. and 7.

Rolled out puff pastry dough with the butter plate incorporated within the dough

Folding over the dough to the inside (the other part has to be folded over as well)

Two dots in the folded in dough to remind me the number of "tours" that I already have done

8. Now you have to place the dough, wrapped in plastic wrapper, for another 20 minutes in the fridge.
9. After taking the dough out of the fridge, you have to start another tour by first pressing the dough with the rolling pin, then rolling it out towards the open sides. Do not roll it out too thin again. Then fold it in again like described above, wrap it in a plastic wrapper and place it for 20 minutes in the fridge again.
After that you should place the dough another 20 minutes in the fridge.
10. Actually you will have to do a total number of 5 tours, after that the puff pastry will be ready for our cheese twists, your croissants or whatever you want to bake with it.