Mille feuille au citron
I had bought a few blocks of french butter from Dean & Deluca recently. They had more kinds of french butter than I had ever seen before. I got myself lost in the imported butter section of the market, Ea-sily. I picked up one of each kind from Lescure (what I am already used to) to Échiré (Yes!!!). I remember having Échiré slathered toasted baguette at the Café Les Deux Magots in Paris – and you bet I was in heaven. I couldn’t forget that very taste for months, even after I came back from the trip. So you can only imagine how excited I was when I found it again at the little corner of Dean & Deluca in New York City.
Le beurre, Échiré
Échiré is located on the west of France in Poitou-Charentes region. It’s a mid-point between La Rochelle and Poitiers. It’s also very close from Celles-sur-Belle which is another big butter producer in the region. These blocks of French butter are made from cultured cream, so they have this unmistakable taste and aroma of a cross between crème fraîche and sweet cream. It has its prestigious label of the A.O.C. beurre des Deux-Sèvres. Here A.O.C. stands for Appellation d’origine contrôlée, which literally means controlled designation of origin. The French government protects superior agricultural products such as wine, cheese, and butter by enforcing the set standards on every designated terroir. For instance, only two regions are recognized for butter – Isigny region and Poitou-Charentes region. In order to have the A.O.C. status, it has to come from within the two designated region, and it also has to meet the set A.O.C. production standards. This way, the tradition and the excellence can long live and carry over generations.
Encasing the precious block of butter
So having this prestigious butter on hand, I needed to do something that does this product justice. As energy-consuming as it is, pâte feuilletée (puff pastry) was the only thing that I could think of that would make sense. This particular butter has about 84% of butter fat ( European butter has 82+%, and American 80-81%), so it would make really flaky layers. I had made palmiers with the puff pastry before, so I wanted to try something new, and mille feuille came to mind. Mille feuille literally means a thousand layers. It’s many layers, and oh-so-good. And also, it requires labor of love.♥
So let’s get to it. For the puff pastry you’ll need…
…to preheat oven to 400F
Détrempe
200 g flour
70 g melted butter + a pinch of salt
80 g water
Beurrage
150 g firm cold butter
First sift the flour into a bowl, and melt butter in a microwave (it’s just easy that way). Add a pinch of salt into the melted butter and mix so the heat dissolves salt into butter. Add the water to the melted butter, and slowly mix the whole thing into flour. Mix and knead to form a ball. It doesn’t need to be very smooth looking at this stage, so avoid working the dough too hard. Wrap with plastic and let it rest in the fridge while you prepare the beurrage. Place the block of butter between parchment paper and flatten it out with a dough roller. You want to make sure that the butter block is malleable so it rolls out smooth when it gets laminated later. Wrap and place return to fridge.
Now, take the détrempe out onto a board and make a cross incision on top with a sharp knife. Turn the dough so the incision is now X, instead of a cross. With a dough roller, roll out from the center out to create a dough envelope like the picture above. Place the beurrage in the center and encase. Make sure not to encase air. Later on the air bubble can pop and tear the dough. Once you have a laminated dough, we’re ready to roll.
Carefully roll out the dough using a roller (or an empty bottle wrapped in plastic). When you have a long rectangle turn it 90°, divide the longer side into 3 with eyes, and fold the right and left third onto the middle to create 3 layers. Roll it out to a long rectangle, and repeat the same procedure. Wrap it and let it rest in the fridge for 20-30 mins. Repeat this at least twice more, and your dough will be ready to be baked.
Baked puff pastry sheets of three
Take the finished puff pastry dough out from the fridge, and roll out into a thin sheet. Then take a docker or a fork to create many mini steam holes so it’ll bake nicely without puffing up ugly. Place it on a sheet tray and put another sheet tray on top so the sheet bakes evenly. Without the even weight on top, the puff sheet won’t bake flat. And we all know that ugly baked puff pastry means sad you, because of the sheer volume of work that goes into it. So make sure you bake your baby right. Bake for about 25 mins, or until the puff is all baked and caramelized. If the puff isn’t fully baked, the layers won’t flake but stick. So make sure to bake it through.
While the puff is being baked in the oven, make the crème pâtissière, or what we call pastry cream. Pastry cream is versatile, and it’s quite easy to make. For that you’ll need…
500 mL whole milk
3 egg yolks
1 egg
100 g sugar
50 g flour, sifted
1 vanilla bean, scraped
In a bowl, whisk together eggs and sugar, then slowly combine the sifted flour. Meanwhile, heat up the milk with vanilla bean. When the milk comes to boil, take it off the heat and whisk in 3/4 of it into the egg mixture. When the egg mixture is tempered with milk, pour it back to the pot and bring it to a boil. Make sure to whisk, whisk, whisk so the bottom doesn’t scorch. When you see the thick mixture bubbling up, that’s when it’s done. So take it off the heat and pass it through a sieve. Place the still warm pastry cream onto a plastic wrapped tray and put a wrap directly on top, so the skin doesn’t form. Let it cool in the fridge.
Flaky layers
By the time you’re done with the pastry cream, the puff should be about ready. When it’s done, take out the sheet and cut into a rectangle with a serrated knife. Depending on what size and shape you want your mille feuille to be, cut the big rectangle into smaller rectangles. Be careful not to smash the puff and destroy it, it’s very sensitive!
I decided to make the classic, tri-layered mille feuille, so I cut mine into equal size of three. The puff pastry sheet came out SUPER flaky, and nicely caramelized. It was kind of unreal when I had a huge rectangle of buttery flaky layers right in front of my eyes. For me, it’s one of those things that I would eat on my deathbed. Well, more than anything though, I just felt satisfied for doing the butter justice – the successful puff pastry was mainly possible because of its higher butterfat percentage. It makes all the work so worth it!
Pastry cream on puff pastry
Now for the assembly, pipe the pastry cream using a pastry bag on the bottom layer (you can use the Ziploc bag and cut off a corner too if you don’t have a pastry bag). Place another layer on top, and repeat. Place the final layer on top. You can sprinkle the top with some powdered sugar, or glaze with white fondant glaze. I made a quick icing with powdered sugar and lemon juice and glazed the top. Believe it of not, that lemon juice was a saving grace as it gave a burst of citrus and cut through the butteriness. My roommate really liked the citrus, creaminess, and butteriness all in one bite. But especially the citrus.
Mille feuille au citron
I must say that it is pretty damn satisfying when you have 1) flaky buttery layers, 2) creamy (but not heavy) pastry cream, and 3) a flash of sweetness and the citrus zing all together in one bite. Or maybe it’s just how the labor of love tastes like. But either way, I feel that the end product was worth spending the whole day in the kitchen on a lazy Sunday when I could have taken a nap or been out with friends. Now that I know how it works, I am definitely trying another variation next time. But until then… I will enjoy these thousand layers.
