The Lamination of Puff Pastry

Our patissiers and bakers spend over two days laminating 30kg of puff pastry three to four times a week for our savouries from bridies, sausage rolls and vegetable tarts. Its also used for sweet production from our Pithivier, Tarte aux Pommes Pate Feuilletee and Mille Feuille Vanille.

The laminating process consists of making a ‘DÉTREMPE’ or ‘WATER DOUGH’ which is a dough made with water, flour, salt, butter and white wine vinegar. This dough is then rested overnight, the following day half the weight of the dough in butter is folded into the dough. This process takes 3 – 4 hours, resting the dough between folds and turns, (six turns in total) this is crucial to creating hundreds of alternating layers of butter and dough, which when baked the butter creates steam and forces the dough to puff up and take the form of puff pastry, our puff pastry contains 729 fine layers of crisp pastry.

Below is the laminated puff pastry being used to make our Bridies, sausage meat mixed with puréed onions, grated carrots and seasoning.