You hear it all the time where things like Danish and croissants are concerned: is all that butter strictly necessary? The answer is yes, yes and yes. Not only is butter crucial to the physics of mechanical leavening, it tastes, well, fantastic. It can in fact be argued that the entire raison d'être of laminated dough is to immerse the eater in the experience of pure (almost) unadulterated butter. It's a heretical concept in the age of lipid hysteria, obviously. Yet as I've written ad nauseam in the past, one reasonably-sized "real" indulgence can take the place of a great many larger, ersatz ones. Case in point the simple satisfying elegance of a croissant (made with a good French or Euro-style butter) and a cup of coffee. Pretty much does it for you 'till lunch time.

The idea can of course be pushed too far. There are French croissants that contain over 50% butter. That's a bit much even for me, but I respect them. Oh yes siree I respect them. For outside of a good laminated dough I can think of no other food device in which butter takes center stage in quite the same way. There are scores of decadently buttery recipes out there in the cooking world, certainly, but none that I can think of that provide the same sort of podium for butter, upon which it can stand and shout out to the world: here I am all you butter-phobes out there! Eat me! Taste me! Love me!

Because let's be honest: how often do we give ourselves permission to worship butter for its own sake, eh? We eat it often enough, but guiltily...slicing a slightly thick pat for our English muffin while no one's looking, hating ourselves for sneaking an extra tablespoon into our macaroni & cheese. But a good coffee cake — and I mean a really good one made from a scratch laminated dough — lets you hold your head up high and declare: yes, YES I love good butter! And I'm not ashamed! This afternoon I will return to my regular path of moderation, but while this thin slice of heaven lasts I swear: I will worship every last unctuous morsel of this golden, butterfat-based miracle!!!

Of course unless you live in Manhattan you may not have the luxury of being able to exclaim such a thing publicly without being committed. Try it though the next time you get the chance. There's power there.

So what other kinds of baked goodies are out there that employ mechanical leavening and mechanical leavening alone? Though you might not think it, pie crusts. True they don't rise nearly as dramatically as laminated doughs, yet the whole concept of pie crust "flakiness" is a product of the same principle: large (or at any rate large-ish) pockets of fat melt away, leaving spaces that fill with steam. Though because pie crusts contain so much fat, there is very little flour-and-water "structure" to hold the steam bubbles in place. So nearly all of it escapes.

This crust is even more inhospitable to structure, and hence bubbles, than a traditional crust in that it also contains ground pecans. It's more crumbly than flaky. What's it for? A Derby pie (though you can't be a baker and say "Derby" pie in Lousiville without getting your hind-end sued off) recipe I'm testing (yes, for that same book). Derby pie is a very rich bit of bakery that's related to Appalachain butter pie (which is very similar in its makeup to a Canadian butter tart), except that it contains chocolate pieces and booze.

The truly old-school versions of these pies called for lard crusts, which puts a body into fat overload (believe me, I've tried it). Though lard crusts are much flakier as a rule than butter crusts. Why? Because unlike butter, lard has no water in it, just fat. And that's a big advantage for reasons I spelled out yesterday in Laminated Dough: The Moisture Issue.

Every laminated dough, be it puff pastry, croissant, flaky pastry or Danish, begins its life as a thick slab of butter encased in a dough "envelope". This 3-layer dough-butter-dough package is then flattened and folded however many times it takes to get the number of layers the maker is after. A folded flaky pastry for say, a galette, can have as few as 27 layers. Croissants often have 81, Danish 243, and puff pastry can have as many as 2187 (though I prefer the less flaky version of 729).

What these oddly specific numbers have in common is that they're all factors of the number 3. 243 is three to the fifth power which is what you get when you "turn" (i.e. execute a letter fold on) a three-layer dough five times. Pretty neat stuff that requires nowhere near the work you'd think. So let's begin then, shall we?

Puff pastry (which is the specific dough I'm making here) is one of the easier laminated doughs. Its composition is easy enough to remember: for every pound of butter, one pound of flour and one cup of water, plus one teaspoon each of salt and lemon juice. It begins not unlike a pie crust, by rubbing a small quantity (about 5%) of the butter into the flour and salt mixture:

Once that's done just enough of the water/lemon juice mixture is added to bring the dough together. As with all laminated doughs, it's best to knead it as little as possible, since you want to activate as little gluten as you can. Notice the finished dough looks a bit dry and shaggy:

Park that on the counter for 20 minutes and meanwhile make the butter block. It's a pretty straightforward affair, requiring only the most rudimentary tools, primarily this:

A club. Actually a Chinese rolling pin, but the overall effect is the same. Next we need a some butter, large pieces, ideally left out of the fridge for about 20 minutes. Below is about a pound of it sitting on a double layer of plastic wrap. It's the minimum I usually work with, since I figure if I'm going to the trouble of rolling pastry, I'd like to have some left over to freeze. Notice there's a little flour on top. That helps the butter maintain its consistency longer, which is important for reasons you'll soon see.

So now all we do is cover the butter and flour with another double-thick layer of plastic, and apply Club A to Butter Pile B.

Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Feel good? You bet it does. And if your spouse and/or children aren't running into the room looking terror-stricken, you're not hitting hard enough. Keep letting out your pent-up frustration until it looks rather flat. Take off the plastic wrap (don't worry if you've beaten a couple of holes in it) and using a knife or bench scraper cut it into a rough square and pile the trimmings back up on top. Repeat the merciless beating.

What's it all for other than stress release? Good question. What you're shooting for here is a butter consistency rather like play dough. Not too firm, since you want it to spread as you roll the dough out. But then not too soft either, since if the butter actually melts it'll soak into the dough and ruin the layering effect. What you're after is a plastic texture that isn't at all greasy looking or feeling. If the butter starts to shine, it's too warm. Put it back in the fridge for half an hour and start over with the tension release (hey, why not?).

The magic texture may take only one good pounding. It all depends on the temperature of the butter and the room. That consistency looks like this: a
pale, dull powdery-looking surface.

Once you're there you want to lightly shove it back into the shape of a big butter pat, using the side of your club, like so:

Set it aside for a moment. Now is the time to retrieve your dough and roll it out into a square slightly larger than the butter pat. Don't worry if it looks scaly and nasty, all will be made right in the end.

Put the butter pat on top like so...

And begin to fold it up:

As you're doing this you want to pull the dough up around the corners and edges to make sure it's as taught as reasonably possible. Next squeeze the all the holes and seams closed (use a little water if you like):

So now what do you think is next? If you guessed more of this:

...you'd be right. Because when making pastry, violence is always the first resort. You want to start by making cross-shaped impressions in the dough...

...then start whacking the envelope at perpendicular angles. The point of all this: to drive the softened butter as far as possible to the edges of the packet.

Smack it, then rotate the package a quarter turn and do the next edge. Smack, turn. Smack, turn. Smack, turn. And of course along the way if you see any conspicuous mounds of butter push up in the middle, give them a smack for good measure (no need to discriminate). A minute or two of this and the dough should be starting to flatten out, which means it's time to produce the rolling pin. Here a big ol' honkin' 25-inch pin is nice, but a small one will work too if that's all you've got.

If you've beaten the envelope with sufficient ferocity, there should be butter within half an inch of all the edges. If not, it's not the end of the world. Just grab the bench scraper and trim the dough until you can either see a thin layer of butter, or you can feel it close to the edge. Next give the dough a couple of more firm rolls with the pin until it's about a third longer than it is wide.

At which point you brush any residual flour off of the inside and just fold it like a letter:

Repeat the rolling and folding process once more and park the dough on a cookie sheet in the fridge for 15-20 minutes.

Having crested the difficulty hill, it is now time to crack a celebratory beer, because it's all smooth sailing from here (whatever that curious mixture of metaphors means). All you have to do is pull the dough out every so often and give a turn or two depending on the dough you're making.

In the early stages of a dough-rolling project, I find I can get away with two turns between chills. But judge for yourself. If the dough is feeling extremely limp, you find that you're breaking layers just by handling it, or butter oozes out looking shiny, give it more fridge time. Alternately, if as you roll you notice that the butter just under the surface of the dough is rigid and breaking apart like icebergs off the Antarctic ice sheet, give it a little less.

If I'm making puff pastry (which requires six turns minimum), I can usually do two turns at a time early on. Much past four turns though, and the dough begins to get a.) elastic and b.) warm. So I let the dough chill for 20 minutes before the fifth and sixth turns, and half an hour for the seventh (if I'm doing one).

Once it's all done I typically roll the dough into a long strip, cut it into roughly pound-size pieces, and freeze it in bags. Boy does this stuff ever come in handy.

I mentioned in last week's post on the mechanics of, er...mechanical leavening that steam is the force responsible for the heavy lifting in laminated doughs. Steam of course comes from water, which means the more water in your laminated dough the better.

Or so one might be tempted to think. Lots of moisture in a laminated dough is in fact a bad thing, especially where the butter is concerned. It's a common misconception that laminated doughs need the water content of butter (and indeed most American butter is about 18% water) in order to rise. The fact is that all the water a sheet of puff pastry is ever going to need is right there in the détrempe (a French word for "dough" or "mix", the adjective version of which [détrempé] interestingly means "soaked" or "soggy") .

The butter's water content actually drags the dough down, working as it does to soften the dough sheets, causing them to stick together. This is why most French pastry makers employ specialty butter by the name of "beurre sec" ("dry butter" which is only about 12% water) to make their laminated doughs.

Sadly, beurre sec is almost impossible to come by here in the states unless it's purchased from a commercial purveyor. That's why, for reasons of both texture and flavor, you want to use a European (or European-style) butter when making a laminated dough. It won't be as "dry" as beurre sec, but drier than most American butters, and the more moisture you can wring out of your process, the better.

Oh, and higher-fat butters also melt a bit more slowly than their more watery counterparts, a great advantage in laminated dough-rolling.

The French claim to having invented puff pastry may not be credible, but at least it has the virtue of being entertaining. So the story goes, it was created by a baker's apprentice by the name of Claudius Gele in 1645. That was the year, apparently, that Claudius' father took sick, and was prescribed a dietary regimen of nothing but flour, water and butter by his doctor. Being something of a pastry prodigy, Claudius assembled a bread made of nothing but those three things, and against the protestations of the master baker he worked for, baked it. The result, to the wonder of all, was puff pastry. Claudius subsequently took his invention to the legendary Rosabau pâtisserie in Paris, and then to Florence, where the duplicitous Mosca brothers took credit for it, darn them.

What the story doesn't say of course is that Claudius' father's serum cholesterol went through the roof in the years that followed, and he was subsequently forced to see a specialist who prescribed a detoxifying regimen of oysters, blubber and Zagnut bars. When he died, both doctors were lashed, then subjected to a bankrupting series of malpractice lawsuits before finally being burned at the stake. The French haven't listened to nutritionists since.

Food history. You really can learn quite a lot from it.

Why speculative? Because nobody knows, not really. Sure, yes, the French claim to have invented puff pastry, but don't they stake a claim to everything with this much butterfat? The Italians likewise say they created (or at least perfected) puff pastry, and indeed there are mentions of it in various documents in Renniassance Venice and in the Medici court in Florence. But then similar claims to the mantle of Pastry Prime Mover have been made by peoples as disparate as the Spaniards and the Turks. My personal guess is that none of them invented puff pastry. Why? Because simple thinly-layered pastries of the puff type have a long history in another part of the world: the Middle East. Sweets (and for that matter savories) wrapped in paper-thin layers of dough go back at least to the ancient Egyptians. The major difference being that where the peoples of northern climes used butter as their fat medium, those to south employed oil. Filo is probaly the best example, the layers of which were originally lubricated with olive oil.

Disregarding the French for a moment (and who doesn't love to do that every so often?), what do Spain, Florence, Venice and Turkey all have in common? Answer: they all had extensive contact with Middle Eastern peoples well before the rest of Europe. Spain was occupied by the Moors from about 700 A.D. to roughly 1500 A.D., during which time it was known by its Arabic name, Al-Andalus. Florence and Venice were of course powerful seafaring city-states that traded almost continuously with Arab peoples even when those, whaddyacallem, crusades were goin on. And Turkey, well, it was part of the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire, which bordered the Islamic Caliphate until Constantinople fell to the Ottomans in 1453 (at which point it became the defacto capital of the entire Middle East).

So...plenty of opportunity here for the peoples of southern Europe to learn the pastry-making arts from the Arabs — which they then adapted to their local fats (all of them — especially the Turks — were butter-eaters to one extent or another). And thank goodness they did, since butter does a far better job of pushing up layers than oil does. Yet it's the Arabs who ultimately get the medal for pioneering the technology that led to modern pastry.

I'll admit it doesn't sound all that appetizing just to say it, lamination being a word that most people associate with driver's licenses, and further with a form of photography that makes an affable person of Scots-Irish descent look like a Columbian drug lord (though that just might be me).

Lamination is actually a word that means alternating layers. That of course can refer to plastic-paper-plastic lamination in the case of licenses (or my daughter's Barney Lovers of America Club ID card), or dough-butter-dough lamination in the case of puff pasty, flaky pastry, Danish or croissant dough.

Puff pastry, the purest of all of these forms of mechanical leavening, comprises 729 alternating layers of butter and dough. Some kinds have 2187. And while I know that sounds like a lot, it doesn't necessitate the rolling of two thousand separate dough sheets. Rather all it involves is but one more "turn" or folding of the dough, which...er, you'll see what I mean when I put up a few pictures (though as a cryptic hint I'll point out that 2187 is 729 times three).

How do laminated doughs work? Well, all of us know that puff pastries and other laminated doughs are a little (or a lot) on the rich side. In fact they can contain more butter than they do flour. This is a happy side benefit of the whole mechanical/laminated leavening strategy, which requires plenty of lubrication.

Imagine if you will a cross section of a piece of puff pastry, with all its layers of butter, interspersed with amazingly thin sheets of dough. Put that in a nice hot oven and some very interesting things will begin to happen. First, the butter will melt, creating gaps between the dough sheets, which at the same time will be starting to gel and toughen. As the heating continues, the water that's present in the dough (and to a lesser extent, the butter) starts to convert to steam. It collects in the gaps where the butter once was (before it melted) and begins pushing the layers apart. As the heat increases the dough layers become increasingly rigid, and the steam pushes them up, up, up. The end result can be a finished piece of pastry up to 10 times thicker than the one you started with.

But wait Joe, I thought you said steam takes up 1400 times as much space as the water it came from, why isn't my pastry twelve feet tall when it's done? The answer is of course because most of the steam escapes out the sides — but not before it creates a very light, to say nothing of rich and delectable, pastry.

So what is "mechanical" leavening? What is the "mechanism" that results in rising vis-à-vis a microbe or some chemical reaction? In a word: steam. Though to be fair steam is the chief rising agent in any type of leavening. Microbes or chemicals may create the initial bubbles in, say, a loaf of sandwich or banana bread, but it's steam that's ultimately responsible for blowing them up. What distinguishes pure mechanical leavening from these other types of leavening is that where mechical leavening is concerned, there is no instigator. The dough must be prepared in such a way that it rises on steam power alone.

Which is no small amount of force, as the steam locomotive amply demonstrates. Sure, if you heat CO2 bubbles up in an oven you'll get some expansion (maybe a few times their original volume). Heat water though, and the steam that's created will occupy 1400 times the amount of space that the water originally did. That's a lot. Yet for all that pure mechanical leavening is one of the least employed of all leavening techniques, at least by home bakers. Probably because the dough preparation for mechanically leavened pastries can be a little...involved.

I'm thinking of course or layered, also known as laminated doughs.