Easy Sourdough Puff Pastry
This easy sourdough puff pastry is perfect for use in any recipe that calls for puff pastry. Made with sourdough, it's healthier than store-bought puff pastry with fewer ingredients and no preservatives. I like to make this sourdough puff pastry recipe weekly and use it in different things throughout the week. Some of my favorite things to make with this puff pastry are cream cheese danishes, upside down pizza, savory pot pies, appetizers, and pie crust.
Equipment
- 1 Mixer or medium-sized bowl
- 1 Rolling Pin
- 1 parchment paper
- 1 Plastic wrap
Ingredients
- ¾ cup warm milk
- 4 Tbl sugar
- ½ cup active starter
- 1 egg
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 3 cups all purpose flour
Instructions
- Combine all ingredients in a mixer fitted with a dough hook attachment. If not using a mixer, just do a series of stretch and folds on the dough over a few hours to develop the gluten in the dough.
- Allow the dough to bulk ferment for 8-20 hours at room temperature. The cooler your house, the longer you can let it rise or ferment.
- Roll out the dough on parchment paper in the shape of a rectangle. The parchment paper helps you to easily move the dough back and forth to the freezer.
- Chill the dough in the freezer for about 10 minutes.
- Take the dough out of the freezer and spread room-temperature butter evenly on the dough, being careful to keep the butter at least ½ inch away from the edges of the dough. The key is to encase the butter in the dough, so you don't want any butter squeezing out the edges of the dough.
First Fold:
- Do a letter fold by folding a short side of the dough ⅓ of the way across, and the other part of the dough ⅓ of the way across towards the middle (like you would fold a letter). This will put the butter in the middle of the dough.
- Chill the dough in the freezer for about 10 minutes. At this point the butter and the dough will be about the same temperature.
- Take the dough out of the freezer, and roll it out again into a rectangle shape using the rolling pin.
Second Fold:
- Do a second letter fold, which makes more layers of butter and dough.
- Put it back in the freezer for 10 minutes
Third Fold:
- Take it out of the freezer, and roll it out again.
- Do another letter fold and put it back in the freezer for about 10 minutes.
- Take it out of the freezer, roll out the dough into a rectangle shape.
- Fold the dough in half just to make it smaller to handle, but don't press it together so you can unfold it later.
- Wrap in plastic wrap and store in the refrigerator until you're ready to bake with it.
- Use in any recipe that calls for puff pastry. Depending on what I'm making, I usually bake it on a baking sheet at 425 degrees for 15 to 20 minutes.
Notes
Since this dough is so flexible, I like to mix up more than one batch at a time, and then just split it into individual batches of dough when it's time to laminate it.
The closer your dough and butter are to the same temperature, the easier it will be to laminate your dough. Putting it in the freezer for just a few minutes between laminations help to keep the butter cold so it doesn't just mix into the dough. What you want is many individual layers of butter and dough.
Make an egg wash out of an egg and a little water and brush the top of the dough before baking. It will give the puff pastry a beautiful golden brown color.
Store leftover baked puff pastry in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to one week.
