Speaking of cheating…

…European, and especially French, pâtissiers have a few secret weapons up their collective sleeve when it comes to pastry making: specialty butters. Which is to say, ultra high-fat butters made for specific applications. Buerre pâtissier is one of these, made speciifically for layered doughs like Danish pastry and croissant. For reasons I’ll get into a little later in the week, the zero-water content makes the pastries flaky in a way that our American pastries can never be (even though our store bought butter might technically be of a higher quality). Ooh that makes me so mad…