Vols-Au-Vent..Coucher Avec Moi?

The September 2009 Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Steph of A Whisk and a Spoon. She chose the French treat, Vols-au-Vent based on the Puff Pastry recipe by Michel Richard from the cookbook Baking With Julia by Dorie Greenspan. ALSO, be sure to check out the blog of my fellow Daring Baker, Delicious Creation-Maker, Jess.

What was for many females (and males alike) of our past a duty, a chore, a necessity baking is also truly an art and a science. The chemistry of butter to flour, rest to rise, egg ratios, bake time, resulting in golden layers of perfection, spongy, fluffy and light tufts of cake, and other morsels of decadence. I wonder if the pioneers of the baking world understood the science behind baking as they produced heavenly cakes, tarts, pudding, and other desserts galore.

All while I was completing this month's challenge, puff pastry, my mind continued to return the aforementioned thoughts and pondering. How did these creators of puff pastry figure out that layers of cold butter produced these light, airy layers. How did they know about these turns and rest times. Like the potato chip, was it a mistake? Wikipedia attributes the puff pastry creation to Claude Gellee, like most culinary delights, other people in other regions were doing the same things as well just calling it different names (puff pastry = phyllo in the Middle East). Regardless of its origin or its intent, puff pastry has withstood the test of time and is still indulged upon. And yes, I say indulged because after you learn the amount of butter that goes into making them, each bite is an indulgence.

It's for this exact indulgent code that stear clear from phyllo dough at the supermarket and/or recipes that involve it granted I've never done the same when phyllo dough foods show up at dinner parties! I've entertained the idea of baklava or spanokopita but just turned away from the butter process. But, when DB comes a-knocking you can't turn away from the challenge.

Rolling and Turning
The ingredients and instructions truly were easy enough to find and put together. I think where mistakes lie waiting to be made, which I feel is common with French cuisine, is in technique. And so much of technique is perception and judgement call. I made sure my dough felt like play-doh and that the butter was more than just cold. But then what really is the "right" play-doh texture? What is the right "cold butter" feel. Or the right texture and mound and dimensions for the butter to fit into the dough and how was to know what size ears/flaps I really wanted on my dough. All things that stress me out in my strive for perfection and the dread of having unpuffed puffed pastry. But still I persevered. I chilled in between every fold for 20-30 minutes, I had sheet pans waiting in the freezer just in case. I was ready. And I was tired! My schedule and life demanded that I do this toward the night and there I was up until 2 or 3 waiting to complete my turns.

I went to bed though terrified and dreading the next morning where cutting and baking and puffing or nonpuffing would happen. See, I turned this day of baking into a dining event where I invited a few friends over to eat my creations as I realized I would have a lot of puffs. And I didn't want to sit and consume lots of butter and flour on my own. So, Puff Pastry/ Vols Au Vents was the theme.

Rolling, Cutting, Shaping and Baking
I actually did not enjoy the cutting part of this project as it took so much darn time, cutting, egg washing etc. After a bout of round cutting I realized I would get more if I did rectangles with knife so I did that. I was going for 3 shells/person for entree as well as 2 shells/person for dessert.

For me, the shells cooked faster than I anticipated though it looked done well before it actually was (the insides were still gooey) . Oh yes and my kitchen started to smoke and sizzle at oozing butter, setting off the fire alarm. Grand ole time. I was a little disappointed at the puff level but as I observed further I realized that given the height that I rolled it out to, I got major puffing!

Eating
While I won't be posting the recipes for the filling I'll quickly name what I did. They were no recipes used, just a little of this and that.

1. An Autumn Vol au Vent - Butternut Squash Spiced with Nutmeg and Caramelized Onions
2. The Frenchy Vol au Vent - Sauteed Green Beans, Mushrooms, Garlic, Onions with a Bechamel Sauce
3. The TexMex - Spicy Chicken, Spinach, Monterey and Colby Cheeses, topped with an Avocado Mousse and Tomato
4. Strawberries and Cream - Fresh Whipped Cream with Strawberries
5. ChocoCream - Chocolate Buttercream topped with Fresh Whipped Cream and Chocolate Chips

BOTTOM LINE: I'm not fazed by making this pastry. It's really quite easy, albeit time-consuming. The one thing that would keep me from making it is just the butter content. I had four people over, I had four sticks of butter. There were 2 or so shells left over. We each ate almost a stick of butter each! Not cool. Delicious, but not cool. Wonder if the pioneers thought about cholesterol along with baking science...

Equipment:
-food processor (will make mixing dough easy, but I imagine this can be done by hand as well)
-rolling pin
-pastry brush
-metal bench scraper (optional, but recommended)
-plastic wrap
-baking sheet
-parchment paper
-silicone baking mat (optional, but recommended)
-set of round cutters (optional, but recommended)
-sharp chef’s knife
-fork
-oven
-cooling rack

Prep Times:
-about 4-5 hours to prepare the puff pastry dough (much of this time is inactive, while you wait for the dough to chill between turns…it can be stretched out over an even longer period of time if that better suits your schedule)
-about 1.5 hours to shape, chill and bake the vols-au-vent after your puff pastry dough is complete

Michel Richard’s Puff Pastry Dough

From: Baking with Julia by Dorie Greenspan
Yield: 2-1/2 pounds dough

Steph’s note: This recipe makes more than you will need for the quantity of vols-au-vent stated above. While I encourage you to make the full recipe of puff pastry, as extra dough freezes well, you can halve it successfully if you’d rather not have much leftover.

There is a wonderful on-line video from the PBS show “Baking with Julia” that accompanies the book. In it, Michel Richard and Julia Child demonstrate making puff pastry dough (although they go on to use it in other applications). They do seem to give slightly different ingredient measurements verbally than the ones in the book…I listed the recipe as it appears printed in the book. http://video.pbs.org/video/1174110297/search/Pastry

Ingredients:
2-1/2 cups (12.2 oz/ 354 g) unbleached all-purpose flour
1-1/4 cups (5.0 oz/ 142 g) cake flour
1 tbsp. salt (you can cut this by half for a less salty dough or for sweet preparations)
1-1/4 cups (10 fl oz/ 300 ml) ice water
1 pound (16 oz/ 454 g) very cold unsalted butter

plus extra flour for dusting work surface

Mixing the Dough:

Check the capacity of your food processor before you start. If it cannot hold the full quantity of ingredients, make the dough into two batches and combine them.

Put the all-purpose flour, cake flour, and salt in the work bowl of a food processor fitted with a metal blade and pulse a couple of times just to mix. Add the water all at once, pulsing until the dough forms a ball on the blade. The dough will be very moist and pliable and will hold together when squeezed between your fingers. (Actually, it will feel like Play-Doh.)

Remove the dough from the machine, form it into a ball, with a small sharp knife, slash the top in a tic-tac-toe pattern. Wrap the dough in a damp towel and refrigerate for about 5 minutes.

Meanwhile, place the butter between 2 sheets of plastic wrap and beat it with a rolling pin until it flattens into a square that's about 1" thick. Take care that the butter remains cool and firm: if it has softened or become oily, chill it before continuing.

Incorporating the Butter:

Unwrap the dough and place it on a work surface dusted with all-purpose flour (A cool piece of marble is the ideal surface for puff pastry) with your rolling pin (preferably a French rolling pin without handles), press on the dough to flatten it and then roll it into a 10" square. Keep the top and bottom of the dough well floured to prevent sticking and lift the dough and move it around frequently. Starting from the center of the square, roll out over each corner to create a thick center pad with "ears," or flaps.

Place the cold butter in the middle of the dough and fold the ears over the butter, stretching them as needed so that they overlap slightly and encase the butter completely. (If you have to stretch the dough, stretch it from all over; don't just pull the ends) you should now have a package that is 8" square.

To make great puff pastry, it is important to keep the dough cold at all times. There are specified times for chilling the dough, but if your room is warm, or you work slowly, or you find that for no particular reason the butter starts to ooze out of the pastry, cover the dough with plastic wrap and refrigerate it . You can stop at any point in the process and continue at your convenience or when the dough is properly chilled.

Making the Turns:

Gently but firmly press the rolling pin against the top and bottom edges of the square (this will help keep it square). Then, keeping the work surface and the top of the dough well floured to prevent sticking, roll the dough into a rectangle that is three times as long as the square you started with, about 24" (don't worry about the width of the rectangle: if you get the 24", everything else will work itself out.) With this first roll, it is particularly important that the butter be rolled evenly along the length and width of the rectangle; check when you start rolling that the butter is moving along well, and roll a bit harder or more evenly, if necessary, to get a smooth, even dough-butter sandwich (use your arm-strength!).

With a pastry brush, brush off the excess flour from the top of the dough, and fold the rectangle up from the bottom and down from the top in thirds, like a business letter, brushing off the excess flour. You have completed one turn.

Rotate the dough so that the closed fold is to your left, like the spine of a book. Repeat the rolling and folding process, rolling the dough to a length of 24" and then folding it in thirds. This is the second turn.

Chilling the Dough:

If the dough is still cool and no butter is oozing out, you can give the dough another two turns now. If the condition of the dough is iffy, wrap it in plastic wrap and refrigerate it for at least 30 minutes. Each time you refrigerate the dough, mark the number of turns you've completed by indenting the dough with your fingertips. It is best to refrigerate the dough for 30 to 60 minutes between each set of two turns.

The total number of turns needed is six. If you prefer, you can give the dough just four turns now, chill it overnight, and do the last two turns the next day. Puff pastry is extremely flexible in this regard. However, no matter how you arrange your schedule, you should plan to chill the dough for at least an hour before cutting or shaping it.

Forming and Baking the Vols-au-Vent

Yield: 1/3 of the puff pastry recipe below will yield about 8-10 1.5” vols-au-vent or 4 4” vols-au-vent

In addition to the equipment listed above, you will need:
-well-chilled puff pastry dough (recipe below)
-egg wash (1 egg or yolk beaten with a small amount of water)
-your filling of choice

Line a baking sheet with parchment and set aside.

Using a knife or metal bench scraper, divided your chilled puff pastry dough into three equal pieces. Work with one piece of the dough, and leave the rest wrapped and chilled. (If you are looking to make more vols-au-vent than the yield stated above, you can roll and cut the remaining two pieces of dough as well…if not, then leave refrigerated for the time being or prepare it for longer-term freezer storage. See the “Tips” section below for more storage info.)

On a lightly floured surface, roll the piece of dough into a rectangle about 1/8 to 1/4-inch (3-6 mm) thick. Transfer it to the baking sheet and refrigerate for about 10 minutes before proceeding with the cutting.

(This assumes you will be using round cutters, but if you do not have them, it is possible to cut square vols-au-vents using a sharp chef’s knife.) For smaller, hors d'oeuvre sized vols-au-vent, use a 1.5” round cutter to cut out 8-10 circles. For larger sized vols-au-vent, fit for a main course or dessert, use a 4” cutter to cut out about 4 circles. Make clean, sharp cuts and try not to twist your cutters back and forth or drag your knife through the dough. Half of these rounds will be for the bases, and the other half will be for the sides. (Save any scrap by stacking—not wadding up—the pieces…they can be re-rolled and used if you need extra dough. If you do need to re-roll scrap to get enough disks, be sure to use any rounds cut from it for the bases, not the ring-shaped sides.)

Using a ¾-inch cutter for small vols-au-vent, or a 2- to 2.5-inch round cutter for large, cut centers from half of the rounds to make rings. These rings will become the sides of the vols-au-vent, while the solid disks will be the bottoms. You can either save the center cut-outs to bake off as little “caps” for you vols-au-vent, or put them in the scrap pile.



Dock the solid bottom rounds with a fork (prick them lightly, making sure not to go all the way through the pastry) and lightly brush them with egg wash. Place the rings directly on top of the bottom rounds and very lightly press them to adhere. Brush the top rings lightly with egg wash, trying not to drip any down the sides (which may inhibit rise). If you are using the little “caps,” dock and egg wash them as well.



Refrigerate the assembled vols-au-vent on the lined baking sheet while you pre-heat the oven to 400ºF (200ºC). (You could also cover and refrigerate them for a few hours at this point.)

Once the oven is heated, remove the sheet from the refrigerator and place a silicon baking mat (preferred because of its weight) or another sheet of parchment over top of the shells. This will help them rise evenly. Bake the shells until they have risen and begin to brown, about 10-15 minutes depending on their size. Reduce the oven temperature to 350ºF (180ºC), and remove the silicon mat or parchment sheet from the top of the vols-au-vent. If the centers have risen up inside the vols-au-vent, you can gently press them down. Continue baking (with no sheet on top) until the layers are golden, about 15-20 minutes more. (If you are baking the center “caps” they will likely be finished well ahead of the shells, so keep an eye on them and remove them from the oven when browned.)

Remove to a rack to cool. Cool to room temperature for cold fillings or to warm for hot fillings.

Fill and serve.

*For additional rise on the larger-sized vols-au-vents, you can stack one or two additional ring layers on top of each other (using egg wash to "glue"). This will give higher sides to larger vols-au-vents, but is not advisable for the smaller ones, whose bases may not be large enough to support the extra weight.

*Although they are at their best filled and eaten soon after baking, baked vols-au-vent shells can be stored airtight for a day.

*Shaped, unbaked vols-au-vent can be wrapped and frozen for up to a month (bake from frozen, egg-washing them first).

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