The Secret To Store-Bought Puff Pastry That Tastes Homemade

Store-bought puff pastry is an outstanding shortcut ingredient for making quick pot pies, tartlets, and quiches. However, not all pastry brands are made equal. The secret to buying store-bought puff pastry that tastes homemade is to take a look at the ingredients list on the packet and select a brand that's made with real butter.

Some commercially-made puff pastries are prepared with shortening or vegetable oil because they're cheaper than genuine dairy butter. As these fats are less prone to melting, they're easier to control and keep stable, which maximizes their shelf life. The problem? Vegetable oils, like palm, canola, and soybean, simply don't taste as good as bona fide butter and lack both richness and buttery flavor.

Classic puff pastry is made by carefully wrapping and rolling a sheet of cold butter into a dough so it's fully encased. This buttery package is chilled, turned, and re-rolled several times to create an abundance of fine layers. Known as lamination, this technique is responsible for lending puff pastry its lofty rise, crispy texture, and golden surface. Butter is a key ingredient in puff pastry because the water inside it causes the individual layers to rise; it turns into steam when it meets the heat of the oven, forcing the tiered layers to surge and open up, creating that characteristic laminated structure and tender quality. Puff pastry made with oil doesn't rise as well and can have a stodgier texture.

While you could make your own puff pastry with your favorite variety of butter, the whole process takes a lot of time, patience, and skill. You'll need to keep several hours free so you can return to the dough every 30 minutes or so to turn, roll, and chill it. Having said that, it's a doable activity as long as you work gently to avoid forcing the butter out of the edges. More tips for making puff pastry include using a European butter with a high butterfat content to elicit a tender and flaky texture, and always chilling it for a few minutes before baking to firm up any fat that may have started to soften. The butter should be firm and cold when it hits the oven, so it doesn't melt and seep out.

Buying a premium brand of puff pastry that uses real butter eliminates all this hard work and tastes almost as good as homemade. For instance, the winner in our taste test of 5 store-bought puff pastry brands, ranked worst to best, was Dufour Pastry Kitchens. Made with the "finest churned sweet butter," this pastry had a true buttery flavor and rose superbly into distinctive layers. Better yet, you can use it flexibly to make several puff pastry recipes, such as apple strudel and pinwheels, to pithiviers and hand pies.