Daring Bakers, September 2009 – Vols-au-Vent

The September 2009 Daring Bakers’ Challenge has been chosen by Steph of a whisk and a spoon. Steph chose Vols-au-Vent, which we are pretty sure in French means, “After one bite we could die and go to heaven!”

Michel Richard’s Puff Pastry Dough
(from Baking with Julia by Dorie Greenspan)

354 g all-purpose flour
142 g cake flour
1 Tbsp salt (cut this by half for sweet preparations)
300 ml ice cold water
454 g very cold unsalted butter
plus some extra flour for dusting the work surface

Put the all-purpose flour, cake flour and salt in a bowl and mix. Add the water all at once and start kneading. The dough will be very moist and pliable and will hold together when squeezed between your fingers. Remove the dough from the bowl, 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 flatten it with a rolling pin into a square that’s about 2,5 cm thick.

Unwrap the dough and place it on a work surface dusted with all-purpose flour and roll the dough a 10″ square. 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.

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!).

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.

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. The total number of turns needed is six.

Forming and Baking the Vols-au-Vent: On a lightly floured surface, roll the piece of dough into a rectangle about 6 mm thick. Using a round 7 cm diameter cookie cutter, cut out an even number of circles. Then, take half of them and cut out a smaller, 5 cm diameter circle in the middle of each one. Place dough rings over larger circles. Put all of them, along with the smaller circles on a baking paper and brush everything with a mixture of an egg yolk and a tablespoon of milk. Bake in a preheated oven on 180°C for 10-15 minutes.

My notes: I have made sweet Vols-au-Vent. Filled them with zabaglione cream that was “seasoned” with my orange liqueur and added slices of caramelized oranges. Dusted everything with powdered sugar. The dough itself wasn’t difficult to make and tasted great.