What is the roll of lard or butter in a pastery dough with the dough gets stretched out paper thin like strudel?
I am trying to make a similar dough for an Italian pastery that has to be streched literally paper thin. I am using breadflour for a higher gluten content. I undersand this is not typical for flaky pastery, however, since its being streched so thin you need good gluten development.
I thought things like butter and shortnening coat flour there by reducing gluten. So I dont understand why 20 of the versions of this dough have some sort of fat worked in, while the only one that worked for me so far was leaving fat out all together.
The reason I ask is that when I fallow the most common form of the dough recipe, I end up with a solid shell instead of distinct seprate flaky layers. When I fallow the odd ball versions with no fat, it works like its supposed to.
Here is the recipe, I am trying to make Sfogliatelle
3 Cups of bread flour
1 cup of lard or butter
2/3 cups water
1 tsp salt
2 Tbsp honey
And what they should look like:
Not like this:
Hi there,
I must admit I've never heard of stogliatelle before so had to look it up. This video came up on the search, I must admit it's pretty impressive! Although it looks like an awful lot of good dough is going to waste...
To your question. The role of butter (or other types of shortening) here is to laminate the dough, i.e. create all those thin papery layers. It keeps the layers of dough separate by preventing them sticking to each other. Also, fat in laminated pastry makes it richer and makes for a better flavour, and generally, the more fat, the better the flavour. And yes, you do need a relatively high gluten flour for a dough to stretch that much! At the same time, the gluten should not be over-developed because you don't want it shrinking more than it stretches. Have a look at this thread and this, you might pick up some tips.
HOWEVER, when making pastry that has fat incorporated into it before rolling and stretching begins, such as puff pastry or croissants, temperatures are extremely important. Both dough and butter should be cold enough so they don't mix, yet not too cold so that the dough could still stretch, and the butter isn't so stiff that it'll rupture the dough. Ideal temperatures range between 15 and 17 C. Because most kitchens are warmer than this, pastry is usually refrigerated between rollings.
I obviously don't know what temperatures are ideal for making stogliatelle, but perhaps the dough should be cooled before rolling so that the butter doesn't melt into it?
One other reason why your stogliatelle don't puff enough could be that they are not trimmed as they should be. The chef in the video does too much trimming for my liking but that's probably necessary to make sure that layers don't overlap and remain separate.
These are the things that spring to mind, but I'm sure other, more experienced folks will soon be here to help.
BTW could you explain what the "old ball version" is? (Or maybe give us a link to some photoes/video if you have one)
Sorry all I ment by odd ball version was that they look the same, but there is no fat added to the dough until it comes time to rolling it out like they all do.
I am not sure what video you saw, but laminated dough is not usually part of this recipe per say. The layers dont seperate like a typical pastery where where the butter melts inbtween layers making a flaky curst.
In this case, whats so unusual, the dough is rolled very thin, then streched even thinner like a pice of paper and then lard is spread over surface. It all gets rolled up, chilled, sliced and formed.
The lamination that typically is required for pastery is irrelevent here I think. I say that because most of the other dough recipes just cut in the lard into flower then knead the dough and stretch. I guess it really is truly a unique Italian type of pastry onto its own, not a french pastery method that we are all more familiar with.
Here is a link to the same thing without any butter or lard added to the dough mix.
http://www.sbs.com.au/shows/italianfoodsafari/recipes/detail/recipe/9562
Right. Well in both puff pastry and croissants (that I'm aware, but I'm more familiar with puff pastry than croissants) no fat is added to the dough. The fat is used to separate the dough layers from each other (i.e. laminate). I suppose, apart from the fact that fatty dough will probably not stretch as well as one that's fat-free, if you add fat to the dough itself, and then use it to separate the layers, your finished product will end up being more fat than pastry!
I assumed that in the video I found (I've highlighted the link in my post above) there wasn't any fat in the dough, and the fat was only spread on top after the dough was stretched. Does the recipe you're battling with say you need to put fat IN the dough?
I'm not an expert but I can't really think of any type of laminated pastry/dough where fat is mixed into the dough. I always thought the main principle is, you keep dough and fat separate because that's what creates all the layers. If anyone out there knows otherwise please correct me.
From what I can judge at the moment, all (or most) of the physical and chemical principles of laminating should apply to sfogliatelle, because it is a laminated pastry. The main difference between sfogliatelle and puff pastry or croissants from what I can tell is the rolling process. In puff pastry/croissants, a kind of envelope is made from dough with butter in the middle, then the pastry is rolled and folded several times whereby the dough gets thinner and thinner and the folding increases the amount of layers. In sfogliatelle, the dough is first rolled to its thinnest, then fat is spread on it, then it's rolled. The rolling multiplies the layers, whereas the fat helps keep them separate. It's this construction process that makes all the difference between puff/croissant and sfogliatelle. If you roll thin pastry up, you'll have crunchy rings. If you fold it many times over in alternating directions, you'll have flakes. The rest i think follows pretty much the same principles.
I still think it might help to chill your dough before and after coating it with fat to prevent the fat melting into the dough. The chef in your video puts it in the freezer!
I personally wouldn't mix any fat into the dough. Fat makes dough soft, so when you roll it out very thinly it's going to rupture. For laminating, dough needs to be strong and quite dense, so that it can be rolled without tearing, but also, a thin dense layer of pastry isn't going to soak up the fat spread on it very easily. Whereas a softer, less dense one probably will.
I really hope my rambling makes sense!
You're correct that most laminated dough recipes keep the fat and dough separate, incorporating the fat through turns. One exception to that that I've found (and have used with great results) is Nick Malgieri's "instant" (or rough) puff pastry, where he works the cold butter into the pastry almost like you would for pie crust, then rolls it out, folds it a few times, and finally rolls the whole thing up and presses it flat. You can see a post I wrote about it here.
This results in a wonderful puff pastry for mille-feuille, Napoleons, elephant ears, etc. It may not be quite as delicately layered as old-fashioned homemade puff pastry, but it beats all-butter store bought puff pastry hands down.
Nick has a similar recipe for croissants. I've made it once, but I wasn't as thrilled with it compared to homemade croissant dough. Although after my success with his instant puff pastry, I might have to try again.
Yes I've used some "cheat" puff pastry too but while the taste was good, it never worked on the texture level, although none of the recipes I've tried called for it to be folded.
It's fascinating that you should mention Napoleon. There's a Russian dessert called Napoleon which is several layers of puff pastry with either a buttery sauce (remains crunchy if served soon after it's made) or custard (moist, I absolutely love the custard one!) and with ground nuts or grated pastry trimmings sprinkled on the top. I always knew this kind of cake wasn't unique to Russia, neither is the name, but a quick google search didn't retrieve anything remotely similar. Yours looks pretty much of the same family (although Russian versions usually have more than 2 layers of pastry).
Some people claim that Russian Napoleon cake was created by Moscow bakers in 1912, in commemoration of the 100th anniversary of Russia's victory over Napoleon. Truth is, similar desserts went as far back as 17th century (I think?). Another story says that the name came from the tradition to cut the cake into triangle pieces, which the people of the 18th century would readily associate with French-style hats.
Do you know anything about the history behind your version?
The version I made was derived from the Napoleons that Albert Kumin used to serve at the Four Seasons in New York when he was head pastry chef there.
You know, it make perfect sense to me now, thank you. I should stop thinking of this as being so different from other pastry. Its just how and where the butter is laminated into the dough. I get that puff pastry will flake when hundreds of layers of buter and dough hit the oven. And I get that rolled up dough with a layer of fat will seprate the layers.
I guess some of my confusion was the shortcut puff pastery where butter is cut into the dough like a pie crust. One of the videos I saw making dough for the Sfogliatelle looked like they were doing that which seems to be throwing me. When I tried to replicate that it tears easaly as you noted. It also dose not fan out like its supposed to when baked. Nice ridges on a solid crust but not seperate layers. Maybe pastry chefs in Italy can make it happen, but I cant seem to.
That is what I think is going on here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUi-CU39QT8&feature=related
I am wondering if maybe most of the recipe I have found for Sfogliatelle are causing this problem which is why a lot of people will not atempt it at home? There are some recipes without any lard or butter added as you suggested. There is another version of this pastry that is basicly the same except for appearance. They look like empanadas except no rolling, stretching or layers. In that case, fat in the dough would work fine. Maybe the distintion between the two got blured. The one pictred above is called Sfogliatella Ricce, the other version is called Sfogliatelle Frolla.
This chef makes them without any fat in the dough:
http://www.sbs.com.au/shows/italianfoodsafari/recipes/detail/recipe/9562
Oh I'm so happy you're getting to grips with it! I mean, my advice is probably not so good, as I said I've never made stogliatelle, what you need really is to talk to someone who has, ideally and Italian. Recipes get changed so much when they "move" overseas.
Just a note, what makes layers in both puff pastry and stogliatelle puff up in the oven and separate into layers is water, not butter. You bake them at a very high temperature, the dough has a lot of water in it, all this water begins to evaporate very very quickly in a hot oven and raises the dough. What fat does is keep those layers from sticking to each other so that they can be easily "lifted" by water steam.
BTW the chef in your Australian video does use fat - not in the dough, but he spreads lard onto strips of dough after stretching them out. And then he puts them in the freezer after rolling them up! I reckon that's to prevent the butter melting into the dough and mixing with it. Odd he didn't put lard on the ingredients list.
Thanks for that, I think I did read about the water somewhere but it did escape my mind.
I know have found 3 or 4 examples that leave out all the fat from the dough and only rub it on top before the roll. I am convinced now that is the traditional way and this adding of butter or lard into the dough is a distortion of the recipe or an attempt to make it more buttery. Maybe this is why even most Italians will not attempt this one at home either. I am betting with the Internet, there is a lot of confusion about recipes like this. The other type (Sfogliatelle Frolla) is just a smooth dough pouch of various shapes. So maybe when people think they are asking for one recipe, they are getting the other.
I wonder if this might be why people think this is so hard to make when stretching dough is done all the time for a Strudel.
Took me some time to find a proper strudel recipe... most of the English language ones just use ready-made phyllo pastry!
Some oil or butter is used in strudel dough. BUT so far as I can work out, a very small amount. This video here for example calls for only 4 tablespoons butter (approx 60 g) per 2 3/4 cups flour (approx 400 g). That's not a lot. More butter is brushed or sprinkled on top to prevent the layers sticking together. I couldn't tell you all of the reasons why fat is mixed into the dough but I'd guess it's for flavour and softness. I still think more fat would make the dough harder to stretch thinly without tearing. Also, the recipes and videos for strudel i found all call for some ground nuts or breadcrumbs to be sprinkled on top of the sheet of stretched dough. That, too, will keep the layers separate.
The amount of fat in your recipe is huuuuge, I'd hazard a guess that it all needs to be brushed on top rather than worked into the dough, unless your recipe specifies otherwise.
from 33 years ago (first anniversary present from MIL, do you think she might have been trying to tell me something?) has stredel dough in it. And a description of it being made when the writer was a child!
I've never tried it, but will have to see what its like when its done. Another cold winter project, its too warm in summer to get a good laminated dough going!
My ex-husband is from Bosnia-Herzegovine (country facing Italy on the other side of the Adriatic sea, so some culinary heritage are shared with italians given the geographic proximity). I had the chance to see my ex-mother-in-law making this kind of laminated dough very often when I visited her. It's exactly the same as the one you show in the video on the second post of this thread, except she probably would have had an appoplectic ceisure if she saw the amount of dough discarded. She made this laminated dough for "pita", a pastry filled either with a ground meat mixture or a cheese and spinach mixture.
I observed carefully how she did it at the time because pita is her son's all-time favorite dish and I wanted to reproduce her recipe so I can make it when back to Paris. But I couldn't practise with her because she had decided I was wasteful and hopelessly ackward (she's a very old school lady and she thought, probably, that tough love would serve me well to learn and make things properly). Anyway, here's what I remember:
- no fat or oil worked in the dough, at all
- she insisted on the right "feel" of the dough to achieve good results, so translated in baker's language, that means dough hydration and degree of gluten development is very important to the final result (she made me touch and feel the dough very often at different stages of the kneading and then after it rested, just prior to stretching it, insisting on its look, texture and feel)
- she used flour to help stretch the dough, in small amounts, just sprinklings on the table
- a mix of oil and butter was spread on the dough only when it was stretched paper thin
For anecdote-sake and to show how seriously pita dough making is important to them, when they fleed Bosnia to Norway and then Sweeden to seek safety, I remember well when we helped buying furniture for their home, choosing a dining room table was a very, very big deal. It was chosen specifically to accomodate and facilitate pita dough stretching (texture of the surface of the table, its finish, absence of seams or adornments on the sides so not to tear the paper thin dough hanging on the sides, rectangular shape with very rounded corners, as wide and as long as possible without extensions since those suppose there is an unwanted seam, breaking the surface of the table and threatening the stretching process.
My ex-huband has now a new partner in life, a woman from Montenegro. When she invites us to share a meal she makes my favorite pita (cheese and spinach filled). She used to make her pita dough by hand, but lately she made us pitas using store bought phylo pastry. She told me it's too much hassle and terribly time consuming to make by hand, so she decided store bought is good enough. Which it is, I can tell since I tasted both versions.
I've seen them both (my ex-mother-in-law and my ex's new partner in life) slave over it for entire afternoons, non stop stretching carefully the delicate and immense sheet of dough. It's hard work, easy to fail, and the kind of process that only lots of practise makes perfect.
What a great story, Ghobz,
There's a great many traditional dishes that take years to master and unless you had a chance to learn them from an experienced cook, you're virtually doomed.
I used to help my mum make Russian blini when I was growing up, but I never made the batter, so when I got married and moved away it took me months to get it right - even though I did learn it first hand! Imagine trying to master something like your pita from books, or unsupportive teachers like your ex-mum-in-law.
Please please don't tell me your husband dumped you because you couldn't make his favourite bread!
Just kidding Foodfascist! Like for all separations, reasons are plenty and complicated.
Kjoyou, I realise I sounded negative about making this dough for stogliatelle. I didn't mean to. Please let us know how your next trial turns out.
That's ok it was a great story. I am still on my mission to make Sfogliatelle, mainly because they are not available outside of Italy and parts of New York. Well and also I like the way it looks even more then the way it tastes. I actually several Italian people in my circle of friends but none have even heard of it living on the west coast of the US.
I am on my own for this but boy would it have been nice to have an older relative to sit me down and show me the ropes. Unfortuantly, both my parents are gone and I didnt develop an intrest in cooking until a few years after they were gone. Recipes from that generation were a little of this and a little of that. I am sort of recreating some of them from taste and memory best I can.
As far as I know sfogliatelle use almost no fat IN the dough and just a little lard melted and spread on the dough before rolling. The hard (*VERY hard*) part of the process is in the final forming, where you have to cut a 1cm cylinder and very carefully unroll it without separating the layers and without creating too much distance between a rim and the next (maybe even 1mm). Actually it's one of the most difficult executions in italian pastry, no wonder that there are very few companies producing and selling the "shells".
Actually I don't even like sfogliatelle! I eat the filling but most of the time I discard a large part of outer dough.
You discard the dough....that's like a sandwich without the bread! Not that I have ever dont that, LOL
Well the first recipe I found was Alex Guarnaschelli on the Food Network link below... used A LOT of butter, and lard, looked good on TV but the reviews are bad because no one can seem to reproduce the TV results. Check out the video, she dose a lot of other weird stuff that I know now is not typical.
She is sort of half right, but knowing what I know now, after checking dozens of other sites, there is no way she could have pulled off her end result without the magic of television (store bought). For that matter, there is no way she could have made that work at all.
She starts with a dough made with chilled butter cut into flour, like a pie crust. She dose note you need more gluten, so she adds somolina flour. She chills things a lot which you actually have to do, but then she veers off and sprinkles sugar all over the top like a strudel. There is no way the layers will slide doing that. She then rolls it up, but she pays no attention to the dough needing to being paper thin and stretched to that point to where you can see through it... so her layers are like 1/4" thick! That might work for a tortilla, but not any Sfogliatellle I have ever seen. She really didnt understand what the extra high protein flour was for.
She cuts them really thick too, about 1 inch which may work if she had done the dough right but typical is about half that or 1cm. Then she trys to form the disks into a cone, but she smashes all the layers in the process and then claims she has a "little trick" to keep the edges from drying out. LARD. Well yes, lard is added at that stage, its not a trick, its a lubricant to help the layers spread out not a way to keep the dough from drying. Then magically she pops them in the oven and they come out looking like they have a hundred layers perfectly thin and flaky. If you look closely, what she puts into the oven is almost smooth. Those layers do not magically pop out during baking. If you look at frozen sfogliatelle before baking, those layers are clearly defined one on top of another like fanned out deck of cards, you can actually count them like rings on a tree.
I am not trying to be snarky, but I started with her recipe and it lead me into so many wrong directions I wanted to point out what I have discovered. Mine looked just like hers going in the oven, but I couldn't figure out what was going wrong, kept thinking it was my bad technique and not a half baked (sorry for the pun) recipe.
Maybe someone at the Food Network Kitchens developed the recipe and told her its just like traditional strudel (where the dough is streched paper thin) and she thought ok, so just roll up boxed pastry, I got it.
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alexandra-guarnaschelli/sfogliatella-recipe/index.html
there may be a reason why virtually no review gives her more than one star, and some say "I wish there was a zero star rating!"
Well so far all I have been able to do is this baby one, its a work in progress:
I have learned a few trick along the way. For one thing, I noticed the professionals on youtube pushing these out dont fuss with them more then a few seconds, like maybe 10. The home backer video that is all over the place spend like several minutes which probably melts the dough or lard too much, making it look sloppy.
Also, I noticed that the experts do this sort of invert trick as they are forming the cone. At first I couldnt figure out why, but now it makes sense. Look closely at the top two samples in this post. The really nice ones have the leaves opening up to the widest end. The home made ones open up to the point. By sliding the layers slightly apart and then inverting the shape, you have coaxed the layers to open up in the widest end. There is no other way to do it.
This may seem like a minor detail, but I suspect, all the professional do this for a reason. My guess is that the leaves open up more because of the way the dough is rolled up into layers. Very smart, who ever thought of that first.
Just discovered this thread. I love sfogliatelle! I'm half Sicilian, but we ate cannolis more growing up. My exboyfriend was Naples heritage, so that's probably why sfogliatelles entered the picture more (well, he just loved to eat, and would have the best of all foods around - he passed on, sad to say, last year).
I've never made them, as we'd pick them up in our (Boston's) North End. As I was reading each entry (before I came to your last post), I came to the same conclusion as you just wrote - handling the dough too much is going to smoosh the layers. They're supposed to be very crunchy (at least ours here in Boston are) - I would think that Italian bakeries use machines to get those layers, also. I would also think that lard would definitely give that desired crunch to the pastry. Through some searches I've noticed that many of the photos homemade versions don't have the distinctive flaky layers that my bakery-bought versions have - that's why I'm thinking that a good part of that might be from machine made doughs.
... according to Mary Ann Esposito, in her book "Ciao Italia - Bring Italy Home." If you read in that Google link, she claims that it's lard in the dough that results in the crispy layers. She also mentions that the quality of the lard is essential, too.
Of course, Google omits the next few pages - that's enough to get me interested, so I'm keeping my eye out for a copy at one of our local used bookstores now.
I looked at her site and I think she also suggest using phylo on place of the dough, but that really doesn't work as discussed on another thread here.
Any type of lard will work, even butter. I wouldn't get hung up on that. Its mostly about technique and less about ingredients that either make or break this pastry...no pun intended.
Lard will give the crispest shell because it is solid fat and the melting point is higher then butter, it also contains less water. Lard is also from what I can tell what most traditional Italian recipes call for.
Here is a secret, dont add any lard to the dough. I have looked at dozens of recipes on the net and the ones with lard added to the dough is for a different kind of sfogoliatelle that looks like an empanada not with all the flaky layers. The fat coats the flour which will make it tender if you wanted to make a cookie, but not strong which is what we want here. It will be harder to stretch without tearing. Trust me, I started off that way and failed. If you look at the few videos on YouTube that are in all Italian, none of the versions being made in a professional kitchen seem to do this either. Water, flour, salt. and mabye some honey.
They dont have any magic bullet or machine that spits these out. The only thing they have is a sheeter which is like a large pasta machine for flattening out dough. This seems to be mostly about skill.
The magic happens when the dough layers seperate duing cooking. So it is criticle that after you streach out the dough, you generously grease up one side before rolling up. And while we are at it, dont be sloppy rolling up the dough, it needs to be tight otherwise during baking the layers will seprate too much in one spot and the filling will leak out.
Also, use bread flour, it is higher gluten which is what we want here so we can stretch the dough paper thin.
Here's another youtube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PlXki6KZqFI
I saw these pastries on the Ciao Italia show when they were filming an Italian bakery shop.
I really want to try making these, but I'm afraid to mess up on them. There are Chinese pastries that have that flaky layers look. The English name is Thousand Layers Spiral Mooncakes. The technique in getting the layers is different, but the rolling and cutting is the same. They use the laminating technique.
That's an excellent video, lazybaker - much better than what I found & watched on YouTube yesterday!!
I'd like to give this a try for the Christmas holiday. I noticed in the beginning of the video the worker at the Cibo Cafe are wearing blue gloves - I'm wondering if they are heat insulating. Could just be a different type of regular gloves over there in Australia, but it would make sense if there is something that would protect the dough from heat in the hands.
I also searched a bit further & found the website for the originator of that video: http://www.sbs.com.au/
They have a great vid on making homemade torrone!! Oh dear... and lots, lots more... sigh... there are not enough hours in the day!!
Lynne
Thank you, lynnebiz, for pointing out their website. Please report back when you do make them.
I used their search engine to find the recipe:
http://www.sbs.com.au/shows/italianfoodsafari/recipes/detail/recipe/9562
Sfogliattelle
Ingredients
Dough
500g plain flour
50g sugar
6g salt
200g water
Filling
900g water
130g sugar
6g salt
310g semolina
1300g low fat ricotta
3 eggs
Rind of one orange
5g cinnamon powder
1 vanilla pod
Preparation
Dough
Place all ingredients into the bowl of a mixer and combine with a dough hook until a firm dough has formed. Remove from the bowl and wrap in cling wrap. Leave to rest for about 30mins.
Using a pasta machine, roll out dough.
To do this, cut the dough into pieces the same size of a slice of bread. Pass each piece through the pasta machine on number 1. Fold the dough into itself giving it three layers. Continue doing this until the dough becomes smooth. This should take about 4 folds through the machine.
On the final fold, pass the dough through gradually, while making the dough thinner by increasing the numbers on the dial finishing at number 4.
Leave the dough to rest on a bench with a think layer of lard spread over it.
Continue with the remainder of the dough.
Once you have all sheets rolled out and covered in lard, start to assemble the roll.
Start by rolling up one sheet of dough as you would a cigar. Roll the next sheet around the first and so on until you have formed a thick roll.
Wrap in cling wrap and place in the fridge for a minimum of 1hr.
Remove from the fridge and cut the roll in 1cm thick disks.
Cover the outside of the disk with a little lard.
Filling
In a large saucepan bring to boil the water, sugar and salt. As the water starts boiling add the semolina gradually and stir, Continue cooking until the filling thickens. Remove from the heat, spray the top with a little oil and place in the fridge. Leave to cool.
Cut the semolina into small cubes and place into the mixer with a beater.
Lightly beat the semolina so that it starts to break up. Add the ricotta and half of the eggs. Continue to cream the filling. Add the sugar and the remaining eggs, orange rind and mix for a further 3 minutes.
To fill the sfogliatelle
Spread the sfogliatelle gently, pushing out the centre and using your fingertips to gently separate the layers, creating a shell shape. Scoop the filling into the centre. Fill the shell to the top and fold over to close.
Bake in a preheated oven at 180°C for 25-30 minutes.
Oh, thanks so much for finding the recipe!! I cannot make these until the Christmas season - I've been losing weight, but had a long standstill for awhile. Now I need to get serious to at least get somewhat close to my goal by Christmas. I have no willpower. If I made them before a holiday, I would seriously eat them all. Well, I might do the same on Christmas, but if I've lost more weight I can allow a bit just for the holiday, lol. Of course, I will report back after I do make them, though. :)
Start making them now, it takes practice before they will be anything close to decent looking. If you want to avoid the calories, I make the dough, but skip the filling and just stuff them with ricotta so I am not tempted to eat the mistakes. You need something inside of them or they will not plump up right.