Les Palmiers Express au Beurre
Les Palmiers Express au Beurre·(lay pahl-myay ex-press oh bur)
Le Goûter: The Sacred Afternoon Ritual
If you grew up walking into a French kitchen at four in the afternoon, you know the smell: butter melting, sugar turning to golden caramel, and the promise of le goûter. Traditional bakeries spend three days folding dough to make a palmier, but French grandmothers have a weeknight secret. They buy a fantastic block of all-butter puff pastry, load it with sugar, and bake it off in twenty minutes. That is it. The trick isn't in the labor, it's in the handling. The dough must be freezing cold, the sugar must be physically pressed into the layers, and the butter must be real. Do not bring that shortening-based grocery store trash into your kitchen.
Before you start
Manage your dough temperature aggressively.
Puff pastry warms up incredibly fast on a kitchen counter. Keep it in the refrigerator right up until the second you are ready to unroll it into the sugar.
Ingredients
- all-butter puff pastry14 oz
- granulated white sugar1/2 cup
- turbinado sugar1/4 cup
- vanilla bean paste1 tsp
Method
- 01
Preheat the oven and prepare your baking sheet.
Heat the oven to 400°F and line a large baking sheet with parchment paper so the caramel doesn't cement to the pan.
- 02
Mix the sugars and heavily coat your work surface.
In a small bowl, combine the white sugar, turbinado sugar, and vanilla bean paste, then scatter a generous handful of this mixture directly onto your clean kitchen counter.
- 03
Roll the puff pastry and press the sugar into the dough.
Lay the cold puff pastry over the sugared surface and pour the remaining sugar evenly over the top. Take a rolling pin and firmly roll over the dough until it is an eighth of an inch thick, physically embedding the sugar crystals into the butter layers so they won't fall out.
- 04
Fold the dough into a tight double scroll.
Take the left edge and roll it tightly inward to the exact center of the dough, then repeat with the right edge until the two spirals meet in the middle, gently pressing them together.
- 05
Freeze the dough log to lock the butter and preserve the shape.
Wrap the scroll in parchment paper or plastic wrap and place it in the freezer for exactly 15 minutes. The French rule is 'bien froid, bien serré'—if the butter warms up, the pastry will not puff and you will not get clean slices.
- 06
Slice the chilled log into rounds.
Remove the firm dough from the freezer and use a very sharp chef's knife to cut the log into half-inch slices, placing them on the parchment-lined baking sheet at least two inches apart.
- 07
Bake, flip, and finish the caramelization.
Bake for 10 to 12 minutes until golden on the bottom, then pull the tray out, quickly flip each palmier with a spatula, and return to the oven for 3 to 5 minutes until deeply caramelized and glossy on both sides.
- 08
Cool immediately on a wire rack.
Transfer them off the hot pan immediately so the caramel does not harden and stick. Let them rest for ten minutes to achieve their signature shatteringly crisp texture.
Notes
The pur beurre mandate is absolute.
Standard American supermarket puff pastry is often made with vegetable oil or shortening. Check the label and only buy brands like Dufour or Trader Joe's that use real butter, otherwise this recipe will fail in both flavor and texture.
The double dip trick.
For an extra glass-like crust, dip the cut faces of your raw palmier slices into a plate of reserved sugar right before placing them on the baking sheet.
From Cook French in America.