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Watch: Making Buttery, Flaky Puff Pastry by Hand

Creating a crispy, old-school French dessert at New York’s Michelin-starred Le Coucou

Puff pastry is made by folding flattened sheets of cold butter between layers of dough; over and over and over again. The process yields a flaky, tender pastry that is a staple of desserts like mille‑feuille or Napoleons, tarts and tartlets, turnovers, galettes, and strudel. Normally when you’re making “puff,” the dough layer is on the outside, enclosing the cold butter layer. But in this episode of Sugar Coated, Daniel Skurnick — the pastry chef at New York’s Le Coucou — is making inverse puff pastry, and by hand.

“I’ve always heard inverse puff pastry is almost better,” says host Rebecca DeAngelis. “I find it’s true because it gets crispier out the outside because the entire thing is basically smeared with butter,” says Skurnick. The two chefs also agree a good puff pastry really should just make a mess.

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