Puff pastry
A laminated dough of many thin layers of dough and butter that puffs into crisp, flaky sheets as it bakes, without yeast.
- Doughs, batters and pastry foundations
- French
Also called: pâte feuilletée
A simple dough is wrapped around a slab of butter, rolled out and folded again and again. Each set of folds, called a turn, multiplies the layers, and a classic puff pastry ends up with hundreds of them. In a hot oven the water in the butter and dough turns to steam and pushes the layers apart.
Everything must stay cold so the butter stays in separate layers instead of melting into the dough; resting in the refrigerator between turns keeps the dough relaxed. Rough puff pastry gets a similar effect faster by folding in chunks of butter. Puff pastry is used for palmiers, mille-feuille, turnovers and tart bases.
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Tools for this
Fox Run 16 x 20-Inch Marble Pastry BoardStays cool for laminated dough and tabling chocolate.See it on Amazon
J.K. Adams French Tapered Rolling PinA long tapered pin that rolls pastry thin and even.See it on Amazon
Stainless Bench ScraperLifts, cuts and squares off dough cleanly.See it on Amazon
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Related entries
Sources
Written by VanillaGoods in our own words from these sources. Last reviewed October 15, 2026.
- Optimization of Fat-Reduced Puff Pastry Using Response Surface Methodology, Foods (MDPI), via PubMed Central (Silow, Zannini, Axel, Belz, Arendt, 2017)
- Effects of Folding on Laminated Dough, Utah State University (DigitalCommons@USU)
- 1.5: Pastry Doughs (Introduction to Baking and Pastries), LibreTexts (Rink and Thibodeaux, Chef John Folse Culinary Institute, Nicholls State University)
- Puff pastry (Q29221), Wikidata