is this too much water?

[devlin]

Working with Michel Roux's rough puff pastry recipe, I was stumped by the amount of water required. I ended up using only a fraction of it, and it was still squidgy wet. Is this the usual amount of water called for in a puff pastry formula, either quick or standard?

Here are the values:

500 g all-purpose flour

500 g cold butter (cubed)

1 tsp salt

scant 1 1/4 cups ice-cold water

I ended up using only about a quarter cup water because once I added just that, the mixture was a soggy slurpy mass of stuff that seemed impossible to make cohere.

Help?

[fooey]

Was there another flour you missed, maybe another 500 g of pastry flour?

Why's the water in cups and the flour in grams. It's usually g (flour) : ml (water).

It could be a misprint. Have you checked the publishers site for corrections?

Edited August 19, 2009 by fooey (log)

[Paul Stanley]

I don't think it's too much water for that quantity of flour. By comparison, Pepin's Techniques (which I normally use for this) has 2 cups of water for 2 pounds of flour (which would work out, I think, at about 250g water for 500g flour), and another book I regard as reliable (Willan's French Cookery School) has 250g for 500g flour. I'd say the recipe you quote is exactly in line with that (indeed, it's probably shooting for 250g water). In bread terms that's only 50% hydration, and it certainly shouldn't be a "sticky mess" once the flour has had time to hydrate.

It's absolutely standard that compared to "short" pastry, puff is heavy on water. The dough (before the butter is in) should be softish, and certainly does not at that point resemble pastry. 1/4 cup water (= 75g) would be WAY less than I would expect.

(Edited to add: Those are "classic" proportions. "Rough" generally uses about the same amount of water -- perhaps a little less ... but not that much less. It should be dispiritingly unlike pastry until you start to turn it.)

Edited August 19, 2009 by Paul Stanley (log)

[isomer]

BakeWise references the recipe from "A Baker's Odyssey" by Greg Patent:

454g butter

482g flour

1 tsp salt

Edited August 19, 2009 by isomer (log)

[fooey]

This is Michel Roux's, the one you're following:

500 g flour

500 g butter, cold

1 tsp salt

1.25 cups water (300 mL)

This is the one I've always used:

500 g flour

400 g butter, cold

2 tsp salt

2 tsp lemon juice (10 mL)

1 cup water (250 mL)

My dough is tacky, but not sticky. If I were to follow Roux's quantities and add an extra 50ml of water, it would be a wet and sticky mess.

Edited August 19, 2009 by fooey (log)

[lapin d'or]

My uk version of the Roux brothers recipe asks for 500g flour, 500g butter, 1tsp salt, 275ml water.

Edited August 19, 2009 by lapin d'or (log)

[rickster]

I don't have any recipes at hand, but a scan online indicates that the rule of thumb is by weight, 50% of the flour amount. Which would be roughly consistent with your recipe.

Regular puff pastry dough has to be pretty elastic to handle all the stretching and folding with the butter encased, so it doesn't surprise me to see a relatively high water amount, compared to say pie dough.

[devlin]

I looked up some sources online and found the water content higher than I'd imagined it would be. But the Roux formula is a little higher (I think). I wondered whether it was simply a misprint in an early, review edition, and I don't have the final edition on hand.

I'll stick to the 1/4 cup less water.

Thanks y'all.