2021 Tour de France - Stage 2: Perros-Guirec to Mur-de Bretagne
While there were no big bike wrecks, like yesterday, my regionally-inspired dish had all the action you could ask for, as I apparently used a bad source recipe, which had me improvising in several steps and ultimately flopped. What happened? Well, first there was not enough liquid in the recipe and my dough was still a dusty loose mess after adding the stated water amount. I kept adding water in small bits because I didn’t want a loose dough. I successfully navigated that challenge. However, this recipe called for slightly softened butter. I felt this was wrong, but not being a master of home-baking, went along with the suggestion. I followed the steps of folding and rolling and it all came together, nicely. So, I guess I was wrong...I wasn’t.
After the first rest in the fridge, I rolled and folded and tucked again, but the dough was starting to get a little wet. I figured this was because of rolling and the handling heated up the dough a bit (partly accurate), but it was still holding shape and went back in the fridge for a second rest. However, when I took the dough out for the next phase of rolling and folding, it was tackier than before. Butter was oozing out of the dough and getting stuck on the rolling pin - it was a complete mess. I managed to roll it up one more time for one last chill.
I ended up having to add a bunch of flour to get the “pastry” dough to stay together at the end, and I thought I may have even saved it. But, the texture was ALL wrong. It was more like a cake, than pastry, as you can see below. So, my baking skills are getting better (I know how to fix things and can roll dough with little worries), but they still are pretty bad, lol. Some things I do are hits, and some are like this, a dud. It was tasty, just totally wrong on the layers and texture. It turned out more like a muffin than puff pastry. I’ll have to dust the flour off the apron and try again, though. I don’t get discouraged too easily.
There's layers, but they ain't puff pasty!
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Copyright 2021, Brendan McCann, All Rights Reserved.
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