Page 48 - Pie It Forward: Pies, Tarts, Tortes, Galettes, and Other Pastries Reinvented

2
. Transfer the dough to a parchment-lined sheet pan that’s been
sprayed with nonstick spray. Gently spread the dough with your

hands to form a rough rectangle and cover it with plastic wrap.
Allow it to rest for 30 minutes in the refrigerator.

A NOTE FROM THE SWEETIE PIE

Roll with It

At my pastry shop in Montpelier, I once witnessed a sight that
almost brought me to my knees with anguish. My helper, an
experienced chef and one-time culinary school instructor, was
rolling out quick puff for pies against the layers. Sacré bleu! After

all the work of folding the dough and creating layers of butter, he
proceeded to mash the dough in exactly the wrong way.
“Lamination” is the perfect description of the process of making
traditional puff pastry because it’s just like laminating a piece of
paper. Think of the dough as the plastic and the butter block as
the paper itself. You seal the butter into the protective casing of
the dough. In the case of puff pastry, you don’t stop there, but you
continue folding and turning so that you create many layers of

dough and butter and dough and butter and dough and butter.
When you cut a piece of dough to roll it out, take a look at a cross
section and you’ll actually see the layers!
When rolling out puff pastry—the quick as well as the traditional
—you must make sure to roll with the layers, not against them.

Roll so that you are pressing down on the layers horizontally,
keeping them stacked one upon the other. That way, they will
expand and puff when the heat of the oven hits the pastry dough.
Roll the dough any other way, and you are squashing the layers
into disarray, transforming your puff to pfffft.

Lamination
1
. Turn the dough out onto an evenly floured work surface. Roll it into
a 16-by-24-inch (40.5-by-61-cm) rectangle. As you roll, check to be