"Rough" Pastry

Okay, here's Zuni Cafe's "rough" pastry recipe. It's a great home substitute for puff pastry, and seems less time consuming than a real puff pastry recipe. The recipe is ridiculously easy to remember, and the technique is not too hard. I'll try to remember photos next time, but the first time around I just wanted to get it right.

• One stick butter
• One cup all-purpose flour
• 6 Tablespoons iced water

For the purposes of a pie crust, salted butter is actually better. For me, a slightly salted crust is preferable to an unsalted one even for a fruit pie. If you can get your hands on it, Plugra or other European butter will have lower water content, which will make the dough flakier. In California, Trader Joe’s has the cheapest Plugra. I didn't have salted butter, so I just added a few pinches of salt to the flour.

The butter should be cold, but not hard. The consistency of clay is a good texture to aim for; pliable, but cold and definitely not weepy from heat. Cut the butter into quarter inch thick squares. Also, all your tools should be chilled in the freezer before you begin.

On a clean dry surface, put your flour on in a little mound. Spread the butter squares over the flour, and then begin pressing each piece of butter flat with your fingers. If you have warm hands, it helps to run them under cold water or rinse them in a bowl of iced water. Just make sure you dry them off before you start. Use the flour to dust each piece as you go. You’ll end up with some big flat pieces of butter, some that look like corn flakes, and some tiny pieces of floured butter. Don’t stress this part, just flatten the butter into potato chip shaped pieces and dust them with flour. You won’t really soak up much of the flour in this step.

Sprinkle the iced water onto the flour, mixing lightly if the water starts to run away from you. Using a pastry scraper or wide knife, scoop everything into a mound. It will look really ugly and unpromising. Press the mound down a little, flattening it until you can fold it over on itself. Press down again and fold over in the other direction. Press and fold a total of three times, but do so just to incorporate all the flour and butter. Don’t try to make it a homogenous mass, and don’t overwork it. When your mass is stuck together, you should still see visible chunks of flour and butter, but they should all stick together. The dough will also be very soft. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least half an hour to let the gluten relax.

Set aside two tablespoons of flour and try not to use more than that for the rest of the recipe. You'll need a little for dusting your surface, dough, and rolling pin, but keep it to a minimum bu constantly moving the dough. You never want to roll the pin over the dough more than two times before you lift and flip the dough. I usually sprinkle some flour on the counter and then wipe most of it off. Roll the mass into a rectangle and fold the rectangle into thirds. Turn, roll out again, and fold into thirds again. Do this one last time, then check the dough. You might be able to see tiny streaks of butter, but all the big chunks should have melded into the flour. If you still have large pieces of visible butter (bigger than a pea), roll and fold into thirds again. When done, wrap the rolled mass in the plastic and refrigerate for at least an hour. Then roll out and use on your pie. If you have time or if it’s warm out, chill the entire pie for another twenty minutes before putting it in the oven. Puff pastry has to be cold when it hits the oven so that the butter won’t melt and start dripping before the flour bakes and gives the butter something to soak into.

If you make the dough the night before (or leave it in the fridge longer than any of the specified times), just let it sit on the counter so it comes up to a workable temperature. You want the dough to be as firm as it can be without the edges cracking when you roll it out. If you start rolling and notice the edges cracking, let it sit for a few minutes before you work it again.