Rough Puff

I first learned of this technique while watching Britain's Best Bakery. Have you ever seen how difficult, lengthy and technique sensitive it is to make your own puff pastry from scratch??? As soon as I saw there was an easier way, it definitely caught my attention.

Appropriately named, "rough puff" - to put it bluntly, is basically a half-assed effort of making real puff pastry! It takes a fraction of the time and there isn't such an urgency for visual perfection.

I attempted a small portion for my first time - to use as a pastry lid on a fish pie. I was quite happy with the ease of making it, and with the final result - rustic, imperfect, golden, gorgeous.

ROUGH PUFF

Bring 1/2 a block of butter to room temperature.
Break into lumps and mix into 125g plain flour with a pinch of salt.
Use a knife or a fork and a cutting motion.

Note: using your hot hands at this stage tends to melt the butter and just smoosh everything!

Add a couple of tablespoons of ice cold water to "wet" the mixture enough to form a ball.
Wrap the ball in cling film and refrigerate for 20 minutes (or for longer on hot days).

Take out of the fridge and roll into a long rectangle.

The butter and flour should look marbled

Fold in thirds (like an envelope), turn 90 degrees so the seams are vertical, then roll another long rectangle.
Fold in thirds again, then wrap in cling film and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

When ready to use, roll out and treat as you would any pastry.
Because I only used it as a lid for my pie, no blind baking was required.

I baked my pie at 200 C for about 25 minutes.

No aiming for perfection here!

The surface puffs up and blisters beautifully