Quick and Easy High Altitude Puff Pastry

An easy recipe for homemade puff pastry dough, that comes together in just a few hours, and bakes up golden, crisp and flaky.

All recipes on Curly Girl Kitchen are developed for high altitude at 5,280 feet. See FAQs for adjusting to higher or lower elevations.

5 from 1 vote

Prep Time 20

Cook Time 25

Chill Time 1 10

Course Dessert

Cuisine American, French

Servings2 sheets (1 1/2 lbs of dough)

2 cups all-purpose flour, fluffed, spooned and leveled (plus extra for rolling out the dough)
1 tbsp granulated sugar
¾ tsp coarse Kosher salt (if using table salt, use half the amount)
¾ lb (1 1/2 cups) unsalted butter, cut into 1/4 inch pieces and frozen for 20 minutes
4 tbsp cold whole milk or ice water

In your food processor, pulse the flour, sugar and salt to combine.
With the processor running, drop the pieces of frozen butter down the chute, one right after the next. The dough will be very moist and crumbly. Add the milk, and pulse a few times to combine.
Dump the dough out and gather it into a ball. Shape the dough into a disk, wrap in plastic wrap, and freeze for 10 minutes.
On a well floured surface, roll out the dough to 8x16 inches, using more flour on top of the dough to keep it from sticking. You may still see some chunks of butter that didn't incorporate into the dough in the food processor, and that's totally fine. Fold the dough into thirds, like a letter. Turn the dough 90 degrees clockwise.
Repeat the above step 3 more times, rolling, folding and turning the dough each time. All together, you should roll out, fold and turn the dough 4 times.
After the 4th turn, wrap the folded dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 1 hour.
The pastry dough is now ready to be used in any recipe that calls for puff pastry. You'll get about 1 1/2 pounds of dough from this recipe, or the equivalent of 2 sheets of frozen puff pastry.

Desserts like Napoleans or mille-feuille are made of layers of baked puff pastry that are then filled with vanilla custard or pastry cream and stacked. You can also top the pastry with fresh fruit, pie filling, or jam, whipped cream, chocolate hazelnut spread, lemon curd, sweetened cream cheese or mascarpone cheese, to make any number of delectable puff pastry desserts.
To bake the puff pastry without any filling, roll out the chilled pastry dough on a lightly floured surface, to between 1/4-1/8 inch thick.
Use a pastry cutter or sharp knife to cut the dough into 3-inch squares, or any desired shape. Brush the top of the dough lightly with egg white, and sprinkle with granulated sugar.
Place the cut dough on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper, and refrigerate while you preheat the oven.
Preheat the oven to 375 F, and position a rack in the center of the oven. Bake the pastry for about 25 minutes, until golden brown and crisp. Let cool, then assemble with your desired fillings/toppings.
To bake puff pastry with fillings (such as fruit filled turnovers), simply follow the instructions of the recipe you're using. Filled puff pastry takes longer to bake, and in my experience, doesn't bake that well at high altitude, as it tends to have a doughy, under-baked layer next to the filling.

Keyword High Altitude, Puff Pastry

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