Sourdough Puff Pastry made With Discard Starter
This sourdough puff pastry is made with discard sourdough starter, rolled with butter to make the lightest, flakiest layers. The sourdough starter adds a tang, and I also give the pastry and overnight ferment to make it better for digestibility and easier to roll out.
Discard starter pastry
There’s no need to feed your sourdough starter for this pastry, an unfed or discard starter is best. The pastry relies on bacteria in the starter to ferment the flour, not the yeast component of a starter. It’s the water that evaporates from the butter that gives puff pastry its rise.
Usually, puff pastry needs hours resting between each couple of turns to rest the gluten. This sourdough puff pastry requires a shorter amount of refrigerated resting during the folds, only really to keep the butter chilled.
The components of puff pastry
Puff pastry has two main parts – the détrempe which is the dough (in this case, a sourdough dough) and the butter block (the beurrage.) The puff pastry is rolled out and folded multiple times to create the layers, and the ‘puff’. The fermented sourdough base dough is so pliable and doesn’t resist rolling the way that regular dough often can if it’s not allowed to rest.
Method
- The first step is to make the détrempe which is really easy to hand knead into a smooth and slightly tacky dough. I place this in the fridge for 8-20 hours to ferment, but you can cut this down to 1-2 hours if you like.
- Place butter between two sheets of parchment. Use a rolling pin to pound and shape it into a neat 6″ square. Chill until cold but still pliable.
- Once the dough has chilled, roll it into a 9″ rectangle.
- Place chilled, pliable butter in the center
- Fold the dough over the butter from all sides, sealing the edges so the butter is fully wrapped.
- Gently roll into a long rectangle.
- Focus on keeping an even thickness.
- Fold the top third down.
- Fold the bottom third up. This was a single turn.
- Rotate the dough 90°, roll again into a rectangle, fold again into thirds. This completes 2 turn.
- Wrap the dough and chill for 20–30 minutes to keep butter cold and relax the gluten. Continue with 4 more turns, so there are 6 in total, chilling between every 2 turns.
- Chill the dough for a minimum of 2 hours in the refrigerator after the final turn.
Cooking temperature and time
The cooking temperature and time will depend on the recipe you use the puff pastry in. Puff pastry does best in an initially hot oven of around 200°C/400°F to allow the pastry to puff up nice and big. The time needed for this depends on how the puff pastry is being used. A good puff pastry will quadruple in height, and butter leakage should not be an issue. If you find your pastry is leaking, or it’s not rising well it is probably the butter that hasn’t been incorporated evenly.
Storing
Unbaked puff pastry can be frozen for up to 4 months to use at a later date. If you’re freezing it, let it thaw in the refrigerator or at room temperature before rolling it out. Don’t let the dough warm up so the butter doesn’t melt and the dough becomes too floppy to use. This recipe makes around 600g. It can be easily doubled if you’d like to make extra pastry for future uses.
Puff pastry recipes
Two of my favorite ways to use puff pastry are by making flaky Elephant Ear Cookies (Palmiers) or apple hand pies! Or, see below for more sourdough discard recipes.
Sourdough Puff Pastry
Ingredients
- 225 g all-purpose flour
- 60 g sourdough discard starter
- 100 g cold water
- 1/2 tsp salt 1/4 teaspoon if using salted butter
- 30 g butter
Butter packet
- 200 g butter
Instructions
Day 1
- In a bowl, add the flour, sourdough starter, water, and salt and knead it into a shaggy dough. Bring it onto a clean work surface and knead it to bring into a dough ball. Work in 30g butter and knead for 4-5 minutes into a smooth ball then place it in an airtight container in the refrigerator for 8-20 hours. 225 g all-purpose flour, 60 g sourdough discard starter, 100 g cold water, 1/2 tsp salt, 30 g butter
Day 2
- Take two sheets of parchment paper. Fold or crease the parchment into a 15cm/6inch “packet”. Lay the slices of butter on one sheet of parchment and place the second sheet on top. Using a rolling pin, pound the butter out into the square, push and nudge the butter into the corners so it fills the packet evenly. 200 g butter
- Place the butter rectangle in the refrigerator for around 10 minutes to firm up slightly, but ensure it’s still a little pliable and not rock hard. If you're making the butter block in advance, take it out 15 minutes before you laminate the dough, to slightly soften. You want the butter and dough to be similar consistency.
Laminating
- Take the dough from the refrigerator and roll it out in front of you into a 23cm (9") square. Take the cool butter and set it in the center of the dough at a 45° angle, so it looks like a diamond inside the larger dough square.
- Fold the four corners of the dough over the butter, meeting in the middle.Pinch or press the seams together so the butter is fully enclosed, no gaps.
- Gently push with a rolling pin a few times along the length of the dough to help work in the butter. Roll the pastry out into a rectangle and fold it into thirds, like a pamphlet. That was a single turn.
- Rotate the dough 90°, roll again into a rectangle, fold again into thirds. This completes 2 turn. Wrap the dough and chill for 20–30 minutes to keep butter cold and relax the gluten. Continue with 4 more turns, so there are 6 in total, chilling between every 2 turns.
- After all the turns are completed, let the dough chill for a minimum of 2 hours in the refrigerator before rolling it for baking.
Baking Temperature and Time
- The baking temperature and time will depend on the recipe you use the puff pastry in. Puff pastry does best in a hot oven of around 200°C/400°F to allow the pastry to puff up nice and big.
is there a video to watch?
Not yet for this post unfortunately!
i understood the starter to be a discard rather than 100% hydration??
Hey Nancy it is still discard starter but my starter is always 100% hydration as well since it’s fed equal weights water and flour
First time attempting sourdough puff pastry and it worked amazingly! I’ve just used the pastry to make veggie sausage rolls and they are simply delicious.
Thank you for the recipe
Do you use 100% hydration starter?
Yup 🙂
Can this dough be frozen and used for baking later?
Yup it can 🙂 there are notes about it in the post
Hi. Thank you for the detailed recipe an pictorial folding technique. You mentioned this can be made with discard starter. So i am assuming levain past its peak is fine to go too, right?
Yup 😊
Hey 🙂
Your recipes all look great, can’t wait to give one a try this weekend!
I’m fairly new to baking, especially sourdough. I was wondering what the difference is between the puff pastry recipe and the pastry used in the croissant recipe? Is it the same base they are just different end products?
Thanks!
Bethan
Hey, so the croissant dough is a bit different. It rises using both yeast from the starter and from the butter in the layers, so it needs an active and fed starter. Whilst the puff pastry gets its rise purely from the water in the butter evaporating, which is why it gets rolled 3 more times than croissants, to create more layers and more rise. And that’s also why a puff pastry can be made using older or discard starter, it doesn’t need the yeast😊
Hi! How thick should I roll it out before I cook it? And at what temp/how long should I cook it? I’m planning to use it ontop of a Irish pot pie. Thanks so much!!
Heya, you can treat as you would store bought puff pastry sheets and roll it as thin as they would be, about 4-5mm and bake it at a higher temperature for 10 minutes to get that initial oven spring (around 220 Celsius), then lower the temp to continue baking until crispy 😊
Depends what your doing with it? I roll mine thicker for pastries and thinner for wellington so whatever your recipe says
If we are doubling the recipe, do we need to roll the butter and dough to twice the dimensions specified? So each time it would be 40 x 60 cm?
I just doubled the recipe and I doubled the dimensions as well when I was rolling it out. Make sure your butter isn’t too soft or it’ll be difficult to roll out, trust me on that one haha. Other than that, it seems to be the same as if you did a smaller batch. I’m hoping this recipe is forgiving on how much rolling and handling is applied to it :).
I doubled it and kept the dimensions the same with no problems! Theres no need to make it twice as long
I know you said that a starter fed within the last 10 hours is good to use. Should it pass a float test? Or is it ok to use a starter which was just fed an hour before hand?
1 hour is too early as that will still include a lot of unfermented flour. You can use the float test to test it 😊