Recipes

A fool-proof, temperature-proof, easy, vegan-isable puff pastry.

From the recipe here. Well worth the read for the techniques.

Below are relevant quotes from that page to save for posterity on my site:

The  pastry is basically made up of two separate dough,
1.The water dough (水油麵皮)
2.The other the lard or shortened dough (油酥麵皮).
The basic water dough consists of flour, water and lard in the proportion of roughly 5 : 2-2.5 : 1-1.25 depending on recipes. In some recipes, a little bit of sugar or salt is added for flavour, but traditionally no flavouring is added. Although lard is the traditional fat used,  shortening, butter or margarine, or even liquid cooking oil could also be used instead of lard. The lard dough consists of flour and lard in the proportion of roughly 2 : 1.

After the water dough and lard dough are mixed separately, the lard dough is wrapped inside the water dough, then the combined dough is layered by rolling and folding similar to making puff pastry.

For the fat, I use oil. Readily available in my house, and hot-hand proof. Makes it easier to work. Doesn’t taste as good as lard but whatever. The main benefits of using oil is that it is fast as you don’t have to worry about re-cooling the dough between foldings.

Both the water dough and the oil-dough should be rested in the fridge for 20 mins before rolling out. At which time both should be about the same texture.

Roll as you would puff pastry – or see the other rolling methods on the linked page above. Note you probably only want to fold it a max of 3 times, or less depending on the thickness you need your final pastry to be.