Life After Berth

Ty's easy breezy beautiful covergir... sorry, PUFF PASTRY recipe.

• 2 cups flour
• 1 cup cold salted butter
• 1/3 cup ice water (more or less if needed)

Place flour into food processor and pulse several times to make the flour nice and fine. Dice butter into cubes the size of...um... dice. Place half the butter cubes on top of the flour in the processor, close, and pulse until you can no longer tell the butter is in there. Open it up and chuck in the rest of the butter cubes, close, and pulse until you have scattered pea-sized butter blobs. DO NOT OVER PULSE! Consider yourself warned...

Now, pour in the ice water as needed until you have a clingy, crumbly, floury hot mess. Whatever you do, even if it's jump jacks, do anything BUT pulse the dough into a ball inside the processor. You'll destroy it.

Dump the hot mess onto a sheet of waxed paper and place on a chilled marble slab*. Shape into a fat rectangular prism (remember those in grade three anyone?). Try to avoid touching the dough please... the heat from your hand will cause the butter in the dough to have a nervous breakdown, and not the kind of breakdown Mariah Carey had years ago... this is worse. Lay a second sheet of paper on top and roll into a half-centimetre slab. You can now lift the top layer of wax paper off, flour the dough surface, and gently fold the dough up to size for storage in the fridge. It needs at least an hour to chill out. Chillin' out allows the butter to reharden so that when you cook with the pastry, you get nice flaky layers. Flakier layers than my professor's dandruff-riddled haircut.

When you are ready to use the pastry, it needs to be baked in a PREHEATED 425 F oven. I stress preheated because one time at bible camp I made pot pies, which turned out to look like a liposuctioned tummy BEFORE the excess skin was cut off. I can't remember how long to bake it for, so just leave it in there until it is golden brown. Probably about 20 minutes, but I could be wrong.

Enjoy! With love,

Ty

*If you do not have a marble slab, hop on your unicycle and make your way to the hardware supply store and buy four $5 marble tiles. Wash it well before you use them. Make a 2x2 marble square by laying some non-slip lining on your countertop, and arranging the tiles accordingly.