Holy. Moly. I’m in love. And this time, it’s for real.

The Great Gluten-Free Flour Test: The Pastry Challenge. This time, Cup4Cup Gluten-Free Flour in my recipe for Traditional Puff Pastry.*

Four All-Purpose Gluten-Free Flour Blends (Better Batter, Cup4Cup, Jules & Tom Sawyer). Four recipe categories (cake, pastry, bread, cookies). Scoring in 10 different categories, all described on the main page of the test.

Here’s the Cup4Cup pastry dough. Puff Pastry dough, before the butter packet is folded in, doesn’t sport more than  a few tablespoons of butter. That means that it isn’t as smooth as you would expect from plain pie crust pastry dough.

The butter packet and the dough should be at the same temperature – cool, but not so cold it’s hard.

This is the Cup4Cup dough after only the first time the packet is rolled out. The very first roll! Just look at it. It’s already pretty darn smooth.

Remember to mark the dough with your knuckle after each “turn” so you can keep track as you count from 1 … all the way up to 6 turns.

The dough was smooth as silk. I complete joy to work with. I have a crush on this dough. Cup4Cup is very high in starch, as far as blends go, so it’s basically like working with a conventional pastry flour. I’m so in love with this dough that I’m working on how to ‘hack’ an all-purpose flour that is lower in starch to make it more like pastry flour, for when you want to make a smooth pastry like this one.

*For the puff pastry recipe, including all the details about the method, see the first pastry challenge post (Better Batter Gluten-Free Puff Pastry).

This is not me, being a pastry whiz. This is just some amazing Gluten-Free Puff Pastry dough, rolled out just under 1/4 inch thick, cut into rounds, brushed with an egg wash, a dollop of pastry cream in the center – then baked until golden brown, and topped with raspberries brushed with simple syrup.

Here’s the official breakdown:

Next week, Jules Nearly Normal and Tom Sawyer gluten-free flours try their hand at Puff Pastry. Can’t wait!

Love,
Me

P.S. I wish you a healthy and happy holiday, whatever you celebrate. And if your holiday can’t be happy because your relatives are crazy, may it go quickly. ;)

P.P.S. Don’t forget to make some Gluten-Free Hot Cross Buns for Good Friday! Seriously, even if you don’t celebrate Easter, you’re going to want to make these. Lightly sweet, just the right spices. Grab one hot out of the oven.