Easy Rough Puff Pastry Recipe - The Woks of Life (2024)

This easy rough puff pastry made from scratch is buttery, flaky and so delicious that after your first batch, you’ll be thinking of countless ways to use it.

Your homemade puff pastry will have a richer, more buttery flavor that will beat store-bought puff pastry any day, and you won’t have to worry about eating shortening, hydrogenated oils, additives, or preservatives.

Just look at the ingredients list of any store-bought puff pastry and you will know what I mean!

Rough Puff Pastry vs. Traditional Puff Pastry

Unlike traditional puff pastry, which involves rolling a whole flat slab of butter into a dough, this rough puff pastry involves grating the butter into smaller pieces and then incorporating it into the dough. A dough laminator is used to create the layers for commercial puff pastry sold in stores but who has a lamination machine laying around? A rolling pin and some minimal effort and practice will do for a homemade rough puff pastry.

Butter is more quickly distributed in small layers in the pastry, producing a flaky layer effect similar to a full puff pastry without as much effort.

Is Rough Puff Pastry easy to make?

You betcha it’s easy. The idea of making puff pastry at home seems daunting but this rough puff pasty recipe is actually quite easy to make and the quality is very good. Since I started making my own puff pastry, I have never considered buying it from the store ever again. Each time I make this rough puff pastry, the process seems easier and better with practice using the rolling pin and making neater rectangles for even folds. I will sometimes even add an extra turn to create more layers depending upon what I am using it for.

What to Make with Rough Puff Pastry

Think of the possibilities when you have your own homemade puff pastry dough stored in your fridge. You can make apple turnovers, blackberry apple tarts or even Portuguese custard tarts we enjoyed during our trip to Macau!

Just look at the beautiful layers on this Macau egg tart shell!

You can also use this puff pastry dough to make savory dishes like:

• chicken pot pies,
• beef curry puffs
• Chinese roast pork puffs
• French Palmiers (Chinese butterfly pastries)

Small batches of homemade puff pastry are much easier to make than you think, and they require very little active time.

After the initial work of grating the butter and mixing the dough, most of the time is used for chilling the dough between rolling out and turning the pastry. Just go and do something while you are waiting for the dough to chill in the fridge––check your email, do laundry, run errands, you get the idea.

I like to make a batch to keep in the freezer and have it at the ready when I need it. This recipe makes about 420g (a little less than 1 pound) of puff pastry. If you’d like to make more, simply double all the quantities.

Ok, let’s get on with this easy puff pastry recipe!

Rough Puff Pastry Recipe: Instructions

Prepare your rough puff pastry ingredients:

If using frozen butter, take it out of the freezer to let it warm up just a bit while preparing other ingredients.

Prepare a cup of cold water and add a few ice cubes to it so it gets ice cold.

Place your mixing bowl into the refrigerator for a few minutes to cool it down.

It’s really important to work quickly to keep the ingredients (especially the butter) cold so the butter and flour do not mix and meld together. Keeping the butter and flour separate creates the lamination, or layers, in the puff pastry.

How many times do you have to fold Puff Pastry?

Each time you roll out your puff pastry and fold it, it is considered one turn and classic puff pastry actually gets six turns. With each progressive turn, you are creating more and more layers by at tripling the amount of folds you had before you started so layers build quickly.

Our rough puff pastry recipe will give you 243 folds which is plenty for a homemade puff pastry and gives you lots of nice layers.

Make the rough puff pastry dough:

Mix together the flour and salt in your chilled bowl.

Use a hand grater to grate your cold butter on top of the flour and salt. Work quickly so the butter stays cold.

Mix all purpose flour, salt, and grated butter together until the mixture turns coarse and crumbly.

Add 6 tablespoons ice water one tablespoon at a time and mix with a rubber spatula before adding the next one until the dough comes together.

Add another 1/2 tablespoon of ice water at a time if you see there is an excess of flour in the bowl and the dough is dry, like in the picture below:

Now you can use your hands to press the dough together into a ball and quickly form a rough disk or rectangle. At this stage, the puff pastry dough will be a little shaggy and streaky which is ok. Make sure you do not overwork the dough.

Immediately wrap your rough puff pastry dough in plastic wrap and chill it in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes or in the freezer for 15 minutes.

First turn: roll and fold your rough puff pastry:

Flour a surface, preferably a stone countertop to keep the dough cool and flour your rolling pin thoroughly as well.

After the dough has chilled, transfer it to a floured surface (reserve the plastic wrap for use again) and use a rolling pin to roll it out into a 6×15 inch rectangle (15×38 cm). Use the rolling pin or your hands to push the edges of the dough inward if they begin to crack; keep your rectangle’s edges straight and not rounded. No need to be obsessive, but neatness does matter to creating uniform layers.

When rolling out the dough, it is important to work quickly to keep the dough cool.

Fold one side of the puff pastry dough over the top of the middle third of the dough and fold the remaining third of the dough on top of that.

Brush off any excess flour from the dough, re-wrap the pastry in the piece of plastic wrap you saved, and chill in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes or in the freezer for 15 minutes.

I suggest keeping the same rolling surface untouched and ready for the next “turn.”

Second turn: roll and fold your rough puff pastry twice:

Roll the dough out again into a 6×15 inch rectangle (15×38 cm). The dough gets smoother as you roll it. Try to keep the edges straight and square – better than I have done in the photos!

Fold one side of the puff pastry dough over the top of the middle third of the dough and fold the remaining third of the dough on top of that.

Rotate the dough 90 degrees and repeat the same process, rolling out the dough again into another 6×15 inch rectangle and folding the pastry into thirds.

Brush off any loose flour, wrap the puff pastry again in plastic, and chill in the refrigerator for another 30 minutes or in the freezer for 15 minutes.

Third turn: roll and fold your rough puff pastry twice:

For your third and final turn, repeat the same steps you performed in the second turn. Wrap and return to the refrigerator.

The pastry can be used 90 minutes after the last time you rolled it but best to leave it to rest overnight. You can also leave the pastry in the freezer for up to a month as long as it is sealed tightly in plastic wrap.