total of six “turns.” With each rolling out, the
gluten becomes more developed, and the
dough more elastic and difficult to shape.
The result of this work, which takes
several hours, is a dough made up of 729
layers of moistened flour separated by 728
layers of fat. (The term millefeuille, or
“thousand-leaf,” is applied to a pastry made
by stacking two baked pieces of puff pastry,
with a layer of pastry cream in between.) The
dough is rested for at least an hour after the
final turn, and then is rolled out for baking to
a thickness of about a quarter of an inch/6
mm. This means that each layer in the dough
is microscopically thin, around a thousandth
of an inch or a hundredth of a millimeter. This
is much thinner than paper thin, about the
diameter of an individual starch granule. The
dough must be cut with a very sharp knife; a
dull blade will press the many layers together
at the edge and restrain their expansion. When
puff pastry is baked in a very hot oven, the
barry
(Barry)
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