This baffles me. I've been experimenting with puff pastry. It's easy enough
to get perfect puff pastry with classic French technique : 2 cups flour, 1
cup butter, enough water to make a rather moist, smooth dough. Pat the
butter into a flat square, roll the dough into a mound with 4 "wings", set
butter on the mound, fold wings into the center, roll, fold in thirds, turn
90 degrees, roll again, fold in thirds, chill, repeat folding rolling and
chilling procedure 2 times. Presto! Foolproof results.

But when I made what seems like a trivial modification (folding the dough
in 4 parts, by folding in half one way and then in half the other, before
rolling), the results were completely different. Since the 4-fold method
will increase the layer count, I only figured I'd need to do the last
repeat for 1 folding instead of 2, ending up with 1024 theoretical layers
(instead of 1458. Big deal). But instead of flaky, the results are
consistently a firmer, more pie-crust like texture - no layers to speak of,
no puffing! Can somebody explain how the difference in folding method can
have such a drastic effect on the final result?
--
Alex Rast

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