Puff pastry calculator
Puff pastry made with a real butter block: more butter than flour, six turns, about 1.1 kg of finished sheets.
Total hydration counts the water inside the eggs, milk and butter.
Puff pastry is mostly procedure: a sheet of dough, a thick slab of butter, and six turns that leave several hundred layers. In the oven the water in the dough becomes steam and forces those layers apart.
How it works
More butter than flour
500 g of butter to 400 g of flour. 75 g of it is melted into the dough itself; the other 425 g is beaten flat into the block. That block alone is 106% of the flour weight, nearly twice what goes into croissant dough — where yeast does part of the lifting.
The salt only looks high
14 g on 400 g of flour is 3.5%, more than any bread would take. But flour is barely a third of the finished pastry: across the whole sheet the salt works out at 1.3%.
Cold between turns
Two hours in the fridge after mixing, the butter block chilled separately, and another two hours after every fold. The butter has to stay a layer; once it softens and soaks into the dough there are no layers left, and what bakes is a short biscuit rather than a leaf.
Sources & methodology
Every percentage in this calculator traces to the published sources below — nothing is invented. Where respected sources disagree, the default sits inside the documented range.
- Moje Wypieki — ciasto francuskie krok po kroku — The anchor: 250 g wheat flour + 150 g krupczatka = 400 g / 200 ml water (50%) / 14 g fine salt (3.5%) / 500 g butter, 75 g melted into the dough and 425 g in the block (106%). Six turns, about 1.1 kg.
- Kwestia Smaku — domowe ciasto francuskie — The short version, kept out of the formula: butter cut into the flour from the start, two or three folds thirty minutes apart, and the water measured in spoonfuls rather than weighed.
FAQ
How much does this make?
About 1.1 kg of pastry after six turns. Kwestia Smaku keeps its own for up to three days in the fridge, or freezes it for longer.
How many folds?
Moje Wypieki does six full cycles, with two hours of chilling after each. Kwestia Smaku shows the short version: butter cut into the flour from the start, two or three folds thirty minutes apart. That is a different pastry — fewer layers, and uneven ones.
What is krupczatka for?
Moje Wypieki mixes 250 g of plain wheat flour with 150 g of krupczatka, a coarser Polish grade. The calculator keeps them on one row, because both are wheat and it is the total that sets the ratios; the split changes texture, not proportion.
Why is the butter leaking onto the tray?
It was too soft, or the dough too warm when it was rolled. Moje Wypieki says it plainly: this pastry prefers a cool kitchen to a warm one and needs long chilling. Once the block softens, it soaks into the dough instead of staying a layer.