Vintage Eats Recipe: 1974 Puff Pastry Pinwheels

Puff Pastry Pinwheels

A wintry weekend is the perfect impetus to begin working with the most elegant of pastries – puff pastry.

What is puff pastry, you may ask? (my cousin did)

It is a simple mixture of flour and water and butter rolled before forming it into a variety of shapes.

This process of working with dough is called lamination. It gives the resulting pastry a light and fluffy texture.

It’s crucial the butter used to make puff pastry remains cold and solid because butter is an emulsion of fat and water. If butter gets too warm and starts to melt, the emulsion will break, and water from the butter will get absorbed into the dough, producing pastry that is bready instead of flaky.

Puff pastry is mentioned frequently on my favorite cooking show: The Great British Baking Show (stream it on Netflix and Roku Channel).

Many episodes are dedicated to pastry with puff pastry featured throughout.

Our friends across the pond encourage us home bakers with Masterclasses of the first several seasons available on the Roku Channel.

I use the word ‘friends’ lightly as I’m referring to Britain’s Queen of Culinary Arts Mary Berry (wearing pink in the pic above) and Top Bread Baker Paul Hollywood (obviously the only male in the photo). Both have cookbooks and TV cooking shows out the wazoo, actually making them way too busy to spend time with this amateur baker. The hosts of the show are comic foils Sue Perkins (second from left) and Mel Giedroyc (far left).

Their many demonstrations on making elegant pastries sunk into this amateur baker’s brain enough for me to consider giving it a go on a recent cold weekend (temperatures WAY too cold for venturing out).

Admittedly, making puff pastry is not a quick process.

It took all afternoon to prepare mine (four periods of rolling out dough!). But as I was playing Scrabble in the next room at the same time with daughters, I used the time between my turns to (wo)man my rolling pin.

The recipe for puff pastry and pinwheels was found in McCall’s Show Off Cookbook published in 1974, which I recently purchased at a church rummage sale.

Here is the recipe straight from the cookbook with my notes at the end.

Making puff pastry:

2 bars (4-oz size) butter

1 2/3 c. sifted all-purpose flour

½ t. salt

½ c. ice water

1. Cut each bar of butter into 3 lengthwise strips. On a sheet of foil, arrange strips close together on a single layer, to form a rectangle. Refrigerate until ready to use.
2. Into medium bowl, soft flour with salt. With fork, stir in ice water until well combined. Dough will be dry. Mix dough with hands until flour disappears. Shape into a ball.
3. On unfloored surface, knead dough until smooth and elastic – about 10 minutes. Cover with bowl; let rest 20 minutes.
4. On lightly floured surface, roll out dough into a 16-x-6-inch rectangle. Place chilled butter strips on half of dough to within ½-inch of edges.
5. Fold other half of dough over butter; press edges together firmly with rolling pin or fingertips to seal. Refrigerate in foil, 30 minutes.
6. With rolling pin, tap dough lightly several times to flatten butter. With folded side of dough at left, on lightly floured surface, quickly roll out lengthwise into an 18-x-6-inch rectangle, pulling out corners to keep square.
7. From short side, fold dough into thirds, making sure edges and corners are even; press edges firmly to seal. You will have a 6-in square. Refrigerate in foil 30 minutes.
8. Starting from center, with quick, light strokes roll out dough on lightly floured surface, lengthwise into an 18-x-6-inch rectangle. Fold in thirds, as above. Refrigerate in foil 30 minutes.
9. Repeat rolling, folding and chilling dough 4 times.
10. Refrigerate in foil until ready to use.
11. Makes 1 pound.
12. Note: Puff pastry dough may also be freezer-wrapped and stored in freezer until used.

My notes:

• When Step 2 says ‘dough will be dry’, it’s not kidding! I didn’t think all of the flour would stick to the ball of dough, but eventually it did. I enjoyed kneading, but set the timer for this to avoid overkill, um, I mean overkneading.
• Use a plastic ruler to measure your dimensions – mine was covered with flour from handling it so often and needed washing up.
• Don’t place too much flour on your kneading surface. It can work into the dough and make it tough.
• Make sure the butter is the full ½ inch from the edges and that the edges are fully sealed. With all of the squeezing from the rolling processes, the butter can squeeze through.
• The recipe recommended foil, but it stuck to the dough and tore often. On the Baking Show they wrap items in plastic wrap so I’d be willing to give that a try next time.

Now on to the Pinwheel recipe:

In addition to the Puff Pastry you need:

Confectioners’ sugar

2 T. jelly or jam

1. Line 2 cookie sheets with double thickness of heavy brown paper.
2. Remove half of chilled pastry from refrigerator. On lightly floured surface roll out pastry to a 9-x-6-inch rectangle; trim edges. Cut rectangle into 6 (3-inch) squares.
3. Cutting right through corners of each square, make a 1 ½-inch slit from each corner toward center. Fold right-hand point of each corner to center to form a pinwheel. Moisten with a little water; press gently to seal.
4. Place 2 inches apart on prepared cookie sheet. Refrigerate 30 minutes.
5. Repeat with other half of pastry.
6. Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Bake pinwheels 15 minutes. Reduce temperature to 350 degrees. Bake 15 minutes longer or until golden-brown.
7. Cool on wire rack. Sprinkle with confectioners’ sugar. Place ½ t. jelly in center of each.

Makes 12.

My notes:

• One sheet of pastry paper works fine to line cookie sheets.
• Working with half of the pastry at a time allows the other half to stay chilled.
• It helped to have a drawing of a pinwheel in the cookbook to know how to make the cuts with a small paring knife (do this on a cutting board to protect your counter). Use my photo to help with this.
• The tips of my pinwheels browned but otherwise the temperatures and times were spot on.
• I used peach preserves to dot the middles. Most flavors would work well – apricot, strawberry, blackberry.

My daughters (who beat me at Scrabble, no surprise) judged the pinwheels as excellent.

Take some time to create your own puff pastry pinwheels and let me know how they turn out!

**

Vintage Find of the Week

Melon Ball Scoop

This adorable little item is out of season – at least where I live – but I have great hopes of reviving it for this season’s variety of melons which we love to abandon. At least it’s fun playing with the handle, opening and closing, opening and closing. Therapeutic, if nothing else.