Sourdough Puff Pastry

This easy, sourdough rough puff pastry is a recipe that you'll use over and over again. You can use this versatile puff pastry to make pies, danishes, tarts and anything your imagination can think of!

Course Breakfast, Dessert, Dinner

Cuisine French

Keyword Sourdough Discard

Prep Time 20

Cook Time 30

Fermentation Time 8

Total Time 8 40

Servings g portion

Calories 4kcal

Equipment

Kitchen Scale
Rolling Pin

Ingredients

200 g All Purpose Flour
5 g Salt (you can reduce if using salted butter)
40 g Water (ice cold)
100 g Sourdough Discard (unfed sourdough starter)
225 g Butter (cold, cubed - salted or unsalted)

Instructions

Before you start this recipe, make sure you have already cubed your butter. I like to cube the butter and then sit it in the freezer while I get everything else ready, this way it won't melt as much when you go to use it.
Add the salt to the all purpose flour and lightly stir together to ensure it's well distributed. Set this aside.
Pour the ice cold water into your sourdough discard and whisk together with a fork until it's well combined. Set this aside.
Now, take the flour and salt mixture and place the cold, cubed butter on top. Using your fingertips, lightly toss the butter cubes through the flour, using the flour to break the cubes of butter up.
You don't really want to rub the butter into the flour at this stage, you just want the butter to be coated in flour.
Now, add half the water and discard mixture to the flour and butter and start to bring the mixture together into a rough dough. Continue to do this, adding a little water and discard at a time, until the dough has come together in the bowl. You need to squeeze the dough together just enough so it's cohesive, but not so much that you smooth the butter out, you still want this in big chunks.
You should still have some dry flour in the bowl, so be really cautious when adding the discard mixture.
Once you're happy with the dough, tip it out onto a clean surface and push into a rough rectangle. The dough should still be fairly dry, not sticky, so you shouldn't need any extra flour at this stage.
Wrap the rectangle of dough in plastic wrap or parchment paper and place in the fridge to chill. Ideally, you should leave the pastry in the fridge for at least 8 hours.
Now it's time to laminate your sourdough puff pastry, so you'll need to take it out of the fridge and allow it to sit for around 10 minutes so it's not super hard.
Lightly flour your counter top and place the rectangle of dough in the middle. Using a rolling pin, start trying to push the dough out into a larger rectangle. You'll need to bring your muscles for this process!
Once the dough has been pushed out a bit, perform a letter fold (see above for fully illustrated instructions on how to perform a letter fold). Turn the dough 180 degrees and perform another letter fold. Repeat this process 4 to 6 times. This creates the lamination that gives you the flakey layers puff pastry is famous for.
Now wrap the dough back up and place into the fridge for around 30 minutes.
At this stage, you can leave the dough in the fridge for another 24 hours if you like or even freeze it (see above for instructions).
Once you're ready to use the puff pastry, lightly flour the counter top and place the dough in the middle of the surface. Roll the dough out into a rectangle or square. You want the dough to be around ½" thick (this portion of dough can be rolled out to around 30cm x 42cm or 12" x 16.5").
Now your sourdough puff pastry is ready to use for whatever you like - whether you're topping a pie, making hand pies or tarts or even just cutting it into strips to top with jam and cream. I like to cut the pastry to size and add it to whatever I need and then place in the fridge for around 10 minutes before placing into the oven).
Before you place your puff pastry in the oven, give it a light egg wash to ensure it browns up. A sprinkle of coarse sugar is a nice touch for sweet applications.
Bake sourdough puff pastry at 220C (430F) for around 30 minutes (depending on how large a piece it is).

Notes

Ingredient Notes

All Purpose Flour - make sure you're using all purpose flour for this and not bread flour because you don't want to develop the gluten in this pastry.

Sourdough Discard - your discard will need to come from a 100% hydration sourdough starter. Using discard that is around 24 hours old is perfect.

Butter - the butter you use can be salted or unsalted (I always use salted). The trick here is to make sure your butter is super cold because this is what will give your sourdough puff pastry the most flaky layers.

Water - the water you use needs to be ice cold to ensure that the butter doesn't melt when you bring the pastry together.

Salt - just a pinch. You can leave the salt out if you are using salted butter (although I think it tastes best with both).

How To Store + Freeze

Before Baking - the unbaked sourdough puff pastry can be stored in the refrigerator for up to 48 hours after you've performed the letter folds and gotten it to "pre rolling" stage.

After Baking - unfilled, baked puff pastry can be stored in an airtight container for up to three days. I like to store between layers of paper towel to ensure moisture doesn't settle on the pastry and soften it. You can gently warm the pastry in the oven again if you want to.

Freezing Pastry - unbaked sourdough puff pastry can be stored in the freezer for up to 6 months. Wrap portions of pastry dough tightly in plastic wrap and then in aluminum foil. Allow frozen dough to thaw overnight in the fridge before rolling out as necessary. You can also roll pastry out into more manageable sheets before freezing between sheets of parchment paper.

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