This could be one of my favorites things when I was a little boy. I never forget whenever I got some pocket money from my mom, I loved to buy this like snacks from a small shop in our neighborhood. I was happy when I had a chance to learn how to do it in Paris. It’s simple but requires some technique as we need to prepare the mille-feuilles dough.
The technique to do the mille-feuilles dough is similar to the croissant dough but much easier as there is no yeast so don’t worry if you do slowly, but to be honest, if you prepare this dough in the kitchen with the temperature over 30oC. It could be a big challenge for you!
Step 1 Mille-feuilles dough
- All-purpose flour 500 gr.
- Salt 10 gr.
- Butter 75 gr.
- Water 250 ml.
- Dusting flour 50 gr.
For the turns (tourage)
- Butter 300 gr.
Knead all together except the tourage butter, at first speed for 5′ then 10′ at the second speed, until we get very smooth dough. Cover it with film and keep in the fridge overnight. In the same time, we can prepare the tourage butter with either the baking paper or plastic, make 300 gr. of dry butter, or any butter you like, into thin, square sheet. Keep it in the fridge until next day use.
Next day, put the tourage butter on the dough , cover it as an envelope, then do 5 single turns . We need to do it quick between each turn and put it in the fridge, otherwise the melted butter may cause a trouble, during the turns, we need to dust the surface and the dough, but remember to clean all dusting flour on the dough when we fold it.
After 5 turns, now time to lengthen the dough, to put sugar on it, I used the honey sugar so it looks very dark, then fold from two sides into the center, use the egg wash to seal the dough and put it in the fridge.
Wait until the dough firm then slice it, each slice around 1 cm thick, as the palmiers will expand a lot during baking, so we better have some space between them. Bake at 170oC for around 25-30 minutes, then take spray or wash a bit sirup on top then back to the oven for 5 minutes until it gets the golden brown color. It’s ready!
Palmiers can be sweet with sugar inside, but we can replace sugar either with cheese, tuna…as you want.
Le petit renard 