According to the food historian Charles Perry,
puff and sheet pastries appear to have been
invented by the Arabs and the Turks
respectively, sometime around 1500. Though
the aim in both is to produce many layers of
very thin pastry, they involve two very
different techniques.
Making Puff Pastry Preparing puff pastry
dough is elaborate and time consuming. There
are several different ways to construct the
dough-fat sandwich, and several different
ways to make the folds; here for simplicity
I’ll describe the standard one.
The cook first mixes pastry flour with ice
water to make a moderately moist initial
dough, with about 50 parts water per 100 parts
flour. Sometimes butter and/or lemon juices
are included to weaken the gluten and make
the dough more easily shaped. The mixing is
done with minimal manipulation to minimize
gluten development, which the later rollings-