Easy puff pastry ("rough puff")

This may be my year of making things I didn't think I'd ever attempt to make! From bagels to English muffins (both of which I've now made several times), I moved on to...puff pastry.  At least, it's a simplified, easy puff pastry recipe - what's been called the "rough puff".

Incidentally, I can't stop saying "rough puff" after hearing the term.  So what makes it a rough puff?  Well, rather than having to go through the intricate and very time-consuming process of rolling out a butter packet and incorporating it into the dough, folding, rolling, and repeating the process several times between refrigeration (reasons I've never been tempted to try making puff pastry), this dough starts off a bit like pie dough and comes together in no time.  We're talking 15 minutes if you're efficient and maybe more like 30 minutes if you're not, like me!

This recipe is another I learned about from the fabulous site, Dessert for Two.  As you can gather from the photos above, cubes of butter are cut into the flour, then brought together with ice water to form a rough dough.  You roll the dough out into a rectangle, fold it like a letter, give it a quarter turn, then roll it out again.  Repeat this process of folding, turning, and rolling 6-7 times (no refrigerating in between) and you have your rough puff pastry dough.  

You don't need me to tell you there are so many uses for puff pastry.  I decided to take my rough puff and use it to make some shortcut chocolate croissants (or pains au chocolat) and chocolate-almond croissants.  I've done it before using store-bought puff pastry. 

True croissants involve leavened dough.  It's basically a cross between a yeasted dough and butter-layered dough like puff pastry.  The result is a stretchy, chewy, yet flaky texture, that's, of course, encased in buttery richness.  For a shortcut, puff pastry alone will due here.  I filled the dough generously with chopped dark chocolate, and for the almond version, I tucked in a bit of almond paste as well.   

The rough puff I made may not have boasted tons of layers but the result was very similar to what I get when I use store-bought puff pastry for this purpose.  My family really enjoy my endeavor and the rough puff was truly surprisingly easy. This experience may help me work up the courage to branch out even further...maybe try my hand at actually making a small batch of homemade croissants (or chocolate croissants) one of these days!

Easy chocolate-almond croissants

I'm sure you've seen many recipes for making shortcut croissant or pain au chocolat using store-bought puff pastry.  So while this is hardly earth-shattering, I'm actually pretty psyched about it because this almond version has a baton of almond paste tucked into it that makes it a world better (in my opinion, anyway) than those without.  Admittedly, I'm biased because almond paste is one of my favorite baking ingredients.  Hopefully, you enjoy it too...

This was really just an exercise on my part to use up ingredients.  I have puff pastry in the freezer after my last experiment and thought I'd use some of it to make a simple breakfast.  Not surprisingly, my son enjoys pain au chocolat so I thought I'd make a few.  To make things a little more interesting, I went with this chocolate-almond version.  They're filled with dark chocolate and a baton of almond paste (just almond paste rolled into a baton or log shape).  It's convenient that I often have leftover almond paste in the refrigerator so this all came together very easily.

Dark chocolate and almond paste filling

The almond paste warms but stays intact after baking and in a bite, the fragrant, sweet almond flavor plays really well with the dark chocolate.  It also adds a touch of chewiness against the crisp, flaky texture of the croissant.  There's certainly nothing wrong with a regular pain au chocolat - in fact, I made an extra, plain one for my son - but the almond paste inside and the sliced almonds on top add another layer of flavor that we really, really liked.

A plain pain au chocolat on the left

Since I have no faith in my ability to produce that croissant shape, I went with the simple fold/roll-up method that's the signature shape of pains au chocolat anyway.  I've attempted the croissant shape before, with embarrassingly unattractive results.  I never can seem to get the hang of twisting the dough correctly so that it comes out looking like a croissant rather than a twisted crab.  I'll be sticking with this simple method from now on.

I literally made just 3 of these babies for our breakfast.  If you're using a sheet of puff pastry, you can make 6, cutting the dough downward along the folds into three pieces first, then slicing again crosswise to make a total of 6 rectangles.  I assembled them the night before and covered them snugly with plastic wrap before storing in the refrigerator.  In the morning, I topped them off with a little egg wash and sliced almonds before baking.

I believe that traditional, or "true", almond or chocolate-almond croissants are made with day-old croissants that are split in half and filled with almond cream and topped with almond slices before baking again.  To me, using almond paste and store-bought puff pastry is a good shortcut.  No doubt, these chocolate-almond croissants would be markedly better made with homemade puff pastry.  If you've done that yourself, I applaud you.  But since making puff pastry is not on my to-do list, this is the kind of recipe for me.