- Hi, I'm Jacques Pepin.

- And I'm Claudine Pepin.

- People think of puff pastry as the products of chefs and bakeries, but when you were growing up, we had it at home all the time, right?

- Right, Papa, but that might have something to do with the fact that you're a chef.

- It may be so, but today, I'm going to show you how easy it is to transform one basic puff pastry dough into everything from hors d'oeuvres to dessert.

Oyster and asparagus in puff pastry make an elegant first course, and vol-au-vent filled with spicy chicken and mushroom is a stunning main dish.

- For dessert, a spectacular mille-feuille, the French answer to strawberry shortcake, and your dartois with black raspberry jam is a super easy tart.

Okay, Papa, I'm ready to roll.

- Good, you'll be getting plenty of practice.

- Join us for a puff pastry showcase next on "Jacques Pepin Celebrates."

- Today, I'm going to give you and Claudine a special lesson in making puff pastry.

In fact, I'm going to do it three way for you.

I'm going to do a classic puff paste, a fast puff paste, and what I call a rough or instant puff paste.

So, the first thing to do in a puff paste is to mix the flour and water.

The puff paste is made of two things, a kind of bread dough, water and flour, and butter in between layer in between.

The thing is that the objective of puff paste is to avoid that butter by all cost to get incorporated into the bread mixture, so it can stay layer in between and develop the multilayer effect of what we call a napoleon, vol-au-vent, and so forth.

So, the first thing that we do here, I put a pan of flour right into the food processor, or mixer, by hand, you can do it any way you want.

And for the classic puff paste only, I put a little piece of butter in it, and of course, the salt in all of the puff paste.

Conversely, I have take my butter here and I have mixed the butter with two or three tablespoon of the flour that I have from here.

Having a little bit of flour in my butter will prevent the butter from getting too, too soft, and having a little bit of butter into the dough there make it slightly easier to roll.

And now... Turn that on.

And then add your water.

And I have about nine ounces of water here.

I don't know what I'm going to use.

Yeah, about all of it.

That will, of course, be determined by the moisture that you have in your flour.

So, what I have here, I want to do a square out of this.

I use a little bit of flour, absolutely not too much.

I don't want to get it tougher.

And this, of course, is probably the most difficult part at the beginning.

There is two problem that you're going to have with puff paste.

One problem is manipulation of the butter, rolling it, your hand, the whole thing get soft and the butter start getting sticky and goes all over the place.

Second problem is rolling the pastry develop the gluten.

The gluten part is the protein part of the flour and it become very elastic, like a piece of rubber.

Again, those two problem, the cure is called a refrigerator.

Time spent in the refrigerator will make it so that the gluten in the flour will relax and the temperature in the refrigerator will make it so that the butter get hard and doesn't stick all over the place.

Now, the classic puff paste, you theoretically put your dough, or your butter, rather, this way, that is kind of catty-corner to that rectangle, and you bring one corner of the rectangle... Of the square, rather, second one and third one there.

Now, you wanna start spreading it out.

It depend, of course, the way your dough is.

Most of the time, your dough is going to be a bit soft, and in that case, you don't want, as I say, the butter to squish out, so probably the best way at that point is to let it rest 15, 20 minute in the refrigerator, and then you roll it again.

Now, this has been resting in the refrigerator.

I can feel the butter, it's pretty hard inside.

So, now we start rolling it.

So, very often, what you do at the beginning, you press it in this manner, especially if it's a bit cold, like mine here out of the refrigerator.

I mean, ultimately, you want to extend it to approximately... Well, approximately three quarter of an inch to an inch, and you want to keep it as square as you can and the same thickness all over the place.

So, you can see, if you look closely, you can see that layer of butter in the center here.

Now, you wanna work fast, again, and remember, I am on a marble, or something very cold or very smooth.

Now, I'm brushing the flour in between.

You don't want layer of flour in the middle of your puff paste.

So, now I fold it this way up to about a third... Well, a little more.

And this way on top.

This is one single turn.

And now, you can see this way, it has to be turned this way.

And you can see here, one, two, three.

I have therefore dough, butter, dough, dough, butter, dough, dough, butter, dough.

Three times.

Three times three is nine, it's actually seven, because where the dough touch the dough, it's a layer dough.

So, I have seven layer here.

I will give it another turn.

That bring it to 21, less two, 19 layer.

A third turn.

You know, 19 times three, less two, and so forth.

At six turn, you have approximately 1500 layer of bread dough and fat.

And what happens is that when you put it in the oven, if you haven't destroyed the layer by the dough sticking to the table or one thing or another, the water that you put in the bread dough develop into steam.

The steam want to escape.

It cannot escape because you have layer of fat in between which kind of waterproof the whole thing.

So, what happened?

The whole thing stopped developing into the multi-layer effect of a napoleon.

So, this is the principle of the puff paste.

So, as you can see, you don't want to destroy the layer.

Second turn.

How does it feel?

It feels pretty good.

Maybe I could give it another turn.

You don't want to force it too much.

If you force the gluten, it end up being tough at the end.

But maybe I give it another turn, or I try it.

I can feel already that is getting much more elastic.

And after the third turn, basically, there is no more danger.

And I'm sure at the edge here to really squeeze it so that I have a nice fill.

Now, I can see the puff paste is getting to be beautiful.

So, now my puff paste is three turn.

I mark it, two, three.

Now, I refrigerate it and wait at least 30 minute before I roll it again.

My puff paste is almost finished.

I gave it two more turn, as you can see.

One, two, three, four, five.

I have five turn on that puff paste, so this is our last turn.

It's been resting for a while, and as you can see, as you let it rest, get very easy to roll.

And that's what I said, don't fight the puff paste.

Now, I have 60 on that puff paste.

It's finished.

Now it has to be refrigerated, basically, before I use it.

But when I use it, out of that point of puff paste, I do quite a lot, and I will cut it in any way that I want.

The texture you can see here between the fold that I have done here, it's very hard to see, but there is minute layer of dough and butter.

Now, I'm going to show you the fast puff paste.

Is it better than the other one?

Not really, the classic is a little more involved.

This is a bit easier to do, often just as good, and you're going to pick up one or the other.

Now, I have made a tremp here, which is water, flour, and a dash of salt.

In that case, no butter in there.

It's only in the classic puff paste that you do that.

So, what I will do there, instead of doing a square with this, I'm going to roll that into a rectangle and using a little bit of flour.

Though again, remember, this is just water and flour.

And you do it approximately 18, 20 inch and about nine inch wide.

Now, I have a pound of butter again.

Each of those stick of butter is cut into three piece.

One.

Three.

So, there, I started working it as the classic puff paste.

Either way, I actually just put my butter directly here.

And since I have four stick, three piece each, I have 12 pieces of butter.

I leave a little bit of space in the middle because I'm going to fold it.

And now, I have my dough with water.

I'm almost practically doing a turn already because, you see, I have my butter there.

I'm putting a layer of dough on top of this.

So, I have already dough, butter, dough, another bit of a layer here.

And then I have that little bit of space so I can fold it.

So, now we're going to roll it, and again, as I did before, I try to break it a little bit 'cause the butter is pretty firm here.

And I will, again, roll it to approximately half inch, or three quarter of an inch or something like this.

Some people jog, some play tennis, I do puff paste.

And now we do what we call a double turn.

Remember the other one was like a letter.

This one, on the contrary, we meet in the center.

Here, I have a nice seal.

Extend this a little bit, maybe this here, brush it off, and fold it again.

What do I have now?

I have one, two, three, four, instead of three.

That's one and a half turn for me.

I don't think that I would force it again.

I want to let it rest now and give it three more turn, three more double turn.

That fast puff paste get three double turn, plus what I did at the beginning.

One more turn is more than enough.

And as you see, now it rests, it's harder to roll, but it's not elastic.

So, the last double turn I will have here.

That's it.

My fast puff paste is finished.

I have to let it rest before I use it now.

Now, I have what I call an instant puff paste or rough puff paste.

And everything is mixed together and roll into different type of turn.

And in that case here, I put a few drop of lemon juice.

It's supposed to soften the gluten a little bit and make it a bit easier to roll.

I have three quarter of a pound of butter here, I have less butter instead of a full pound, a full pound of flour, a dash of salt, and then I put my water, and I feel that I probably have a cup here.

I'm going to put all of it to start with.

And another thing that I have done here which is slightly different, my flour was in the freezer.

Why is my flour in the freezer?

Because I feel that if the flour is really cold, the water really cold also, then that prevent one of the two problems that I discussed before.

So, what I will have here, it's basically, again, in a sense, the same principle, pieces of bread dough in between pieces of butter.

Again, some flour there on my rolling pin to kind of crush this.

Kind of messy to start with, but don't get discouraged.

You press it like that together, we bring it together, and I kind of gave one first turn now, so I will continue giving my turn.

As you can see in there, you can really see probably using a little more flour than I would with the other, you can see those large lump of butter.

So, it is not like in a classic puff paste where the layer themself are going to be very organized, if you want, inside.

The other layer are all over the place 'cause you have pieces of butter, pieces of dough.

But you still have the multilayer effect of a puff paste, as you can see.

And so, finally, my dough is holding together nicely now, and I will give it double turn again.

If the dough is not too tough now, I will try the last turn.

And if you feel that it's really too elastic, then you let it rest for a while.

So, often people will tell you, well, puff paste is fine, but it takes hours to make puff paste.

Well, certainly, that version of puff paste from beginning to end will take about 10 minutes if it works out as it did here.

And here it is, our instant puff paste.

So, here we have our three puff paste, the classic puff paste, fast puff paste, and instant puff paste.

I hope Claudine is going to try one or the three of them and I hope you're going to do the same.

Well, I am rolling a little bit of puff pastry for you to tin.

- Well, Papa, I gotta tell you, you are the puff pastry master.

- Oh, yes?

- Yes, you are.

And I think you deserve a glass of wine.

- Oh, that's a good idea.

(Claudine laughs) That's a good idea.

- I have never thought about puff pastry.

It looks really complicated, I have to tell you.

But I think once you finally get it into the freezer, it's good, so I'll just come home and steal it from the freezer.

- You can buy it too.

- Okay.

(laughs) That might be a good idea.

- But you know, the problem when you buy it, it's rarely made with butter.

This is very, very thin.

That thing, I'm going to do a special vol-au-vent, so you know what?

- Oh, cool.

- [Jacques] I'm going to roll that on top of this.

- Here, I'm gonna put this... - Put it there in the middle, and unroll it here.

And you know what you can do for me?

Wet the outside of the dough here.

I'm going to roll another one.

- With water?

- With water, yes.

Just a little bit, not much water.

Just barely.

Okay.

The thing is with the puff paste, contrary to a sweet dough, for example, a sweet dough, you have to do it pretty thick, otherwise not only burn like a cookie, but it crumble, you know?

The puff paste is very elastic, as you can see, so that same part of puff paste, I mean, I can extend it to an incredible amount of stuff.

Now, here is what happens here.

It's a special way of doing puff paste, I'm putting... - Oh, that's special.

- This in the center, and here, gonna stick over there.

Now, I have this.

This is glue to it.

- Mm-hmm.

- So, let's cut it with this.

About that size here, and that type of thing is what I call the ranneau, but leave them in a nice shape.

The ranneau de feuilletage, that is the thing that you use for the bottom of tart or whatever.

- Oh.

- And you can do round vol-au-vents, you can do rectangular vol-au-vents, to get a piece of this.

Here, you see?

And turn it again.

Maybe this way.

- Oh, that's very cool.

- Pull it on the other side.

Okay, so I have a little bit of a shape that you can put over there.

You do some round thing that we call fleuron and you keep going up.

I can't even show you a square thing, you know, that we used to do.

Here.

Look at that.

To be sure that it's square, you fold it this way.

It should meet here at the corner.

- Mm-hmm.

- And then you cut this here, and there.

You reopen it again.

You wet the side like you did, you know, maybe just a bit with my finger here.

And then now you take the part where it's cut here and you put it here at the edge, and the other part here, you cut it here.

- Ooh.

- And you have a square vol-au-vent.

Okay.

It'd be nice if you brush this with the eggs.

- Okay.

- But very lightly, you know?

- [Claudine] Just like that much?

- Oh, yeah, but you want it all over, because brown, and not only do you want it all over, I need it to glue that on top.

You can do any type of decoration.

In fact, I cut some here.

So, okay, we need a cap here.

This is just pieces of puff paste, you know?

And you cut the side with the side of a knife.

You put a few leaves.

You are going to have to brush it again after... - Oh.

- To brush the puff paste that I just put on.

And so forth, you can really decorate it here.

Since this is a cover, I could mark it, let's say with a knife, you know, just to make it look different.

Now, what happen here very often, you make a little hole there for steam to escape.

Well, then you can create, in fact, a little piece of puff paste, you know, that you mark on top, you know, like a flower, sometime, that you open, which you mark in the center.

Since then you can make hole right around, a little bit here, so that air can escape, you know, when it's steaming.

Okay?

- Mm-hmm.

- Another thing that you can do for the sides is, for example, with this, you dip that in eggs, and you do the side here.

- [Claudine] And you use the fork dipped in egg so that it doesn't stick, I would guess.

- So it doesn't stick, exactly.

- Okay.

- Now I can mark, let's say a little vol-au-vent like this one.

- Mm-hmm.

- I can mark it, you know, this way.

This way.

Now, I am going to open it.

This is very, very thin, so I mark a cap here, so that when it cooked, I can separate that.

- Wow.

- Yeah.

And this is the fleuron.

So, that's basically it, Claudine, what you do.

Now, you can do that ahead, of course.

Now, watch out, if you put too much egg on top of the puff paste, it run on the side of the puff paste and glue the different layer together.

So, very often, you do a big piece of puff paste, you brush it with the eggs, you let it dry a little bit, then you cut it.

And that's Tonton Claude who told me that.

- Oh.

- So when Tonton Claude say, he knows what he's talking about.

- Yeah, well, that's true.

- Okay.

And I have some done over there.

And what we want to cut, just under the tip here.

So, we have our lid here.

- Mm-hmm.

- And that, of course, you have to fool around with that a little bit to press it, make it a little smaller, that you can take it out.

Am I going to break it?

- [Claudine] No.

- Okay.

But you can keep as a souvenir.

- Gee, thanks.

- So, this is my vol-au-vent.

It's still warm.

This is my lid.

- I'm gonna get you a plate to... - This is the small vol-au-vent, as you can see, the mark here.

And you would want to keep your vol-au-vent usually in a 200 degree oven, just to keep it warm.

And here what I have is some pieces of skinless chicken breast, saute, a little bit of butter, olive oil.

And after that, I have onion, garlic, mushroom, fresh tomato, white wine.

Then I have olives and tarragon, chives at the end.

And I thicken the sauce with a little bit of arrowroot or potato starch, whatever you want to use there.

And that would serve like eight people.

All right.

So, this is vol-au-vent a l'ancienne, we say that, that is old-style, you know, that we do this way, but it's a beautiful presentation.

So, let's put it this way because that little piece is broken.

It's gonna hold.

We put it here, or there, you know.

- There we go.

- Okay.

And here what I have is oyster.

- Mm.

- Poached oyster.

- Oh.

- That I did with a little bit of white wine, a dash of butter.

- Very nice.

- And what we have here is the asparagus, which are long like this.

And the bottom part of it has been peeled.

We cook them, the bottom part of it, we cut it like that to do a little bit of a fricassee, so you can fill up the inside of your puff paste with it, you know.

And then you can put your oyster on top.

Do you wanna put the oyster on top?

Maybe three oyster, and a little bit... - Okay.

- [Jacques] Or two oyster, those are really large.

- Two, yeah.

Do I put this on top?

A little bit?

- Yes, put that on top, and on top, you can put a little bit of the juice on the plate, Claudine, that would be very nice.

Okay, you have your lid on top.

- [Claudine] There we go.

(Claudine laughs) - And here is our puff pastry of oyster and asparagus, and our vol-au-vent of spicy chicken a l'ancienne.

Now, let's survey what we did today.

- What you did today.

- Well, what... - You worked very hard.

- Yeah, I worked very hard because I wanted to show you all of this.

You can see this is a napoleon, we call.

- Mm-hmm.

- Actually, in France, we call it mille-feuille.

A thousand leaves, you know.

The mille-feuille, here, we call it napoleon, but not in France.

There is three layer, you cut it, you cook it on a cookie sheet, you cut it into three strip, and you pile it up with cream in between and strawberry in between, and a bit of cream on top and almond.

Notice, however, that the top part is cut.

- (gasps) Oh.

- We cut the top part so that when you go into it, it's easy to cut.

Otherwise, it's difficult, you make a mess.

- You do this with Paris-Brest too.

- Yeah, and you cover it with cream, so no one knows it.

This, of course, is our little puff paste of oyster, as you know.

- Which is really beautiful.

- [Jacques] This one, you know what that is?

- [Claudine] Raspberries.

- This is a bande de fruit, in that case, a strip of raspberry.

And underneath here, you take the strawberry which are not quite as nice, and you mix them with a bit of strawberry jam and you crush them in the bottom, put the nice one on top, and a little bit of, again, strawberry glaze on top.

- [Claudine] Or raspberry or blueberry or any kind of jam you have.

- Usually that type of color, yes.

And this, you know that one.

- That's the vol-au-vent, with a beautiful kind of spicy chicken inside.

And this is gonna be great.

I can't wait to dig in.

- And this is a dartois.

Sometime it's called jalousie.

Jalousie like in France.

Jalousie like the window we call in France, jalousie.

- Oh, like a jalousie.

- In English, jalousie, yeah.

Where it has a little strip like this.

You know, when you look behind your window through the jalousie.

(Claudine laughs) And this is filled up with a black raspberry.

It's just a strip of puff paste and you put a little strip of very good jam.

You fold it over, you mark it, you put sugar in the bottom of your pan and on top, so when it cooked, it kind of caramelize.

Very simple, they say, absolutely terrific.

- Well, I can't wait to dig in.

- And this is going to be good with your... (speaks in French) - Oh, thank you Papa.

- Thank you very much, and happy cooking.

- Happy cooking.