Easy Sourdough Puff Pastry

Learn how to make homemade sourdough puff pastry that can be used for anything from turnovers to pies. This easy recipes makes the most delicious, flaky, and buttery pastries.

This is the same dough I’ve used to make other pastries you can find here on the blog, but I wanted a place for just the puff pastry recipe.

A place to go when you find any recipe calling for store-bought puff pastry, but you want to make a healthier, fermented version from scratch.

So you can create family classics that a lot of us grew up eating (cough cough, pigs in a blanket), but with this homemade version instead. Grass-fed hot dogs wrapped in this classic puff pastry sounds pretty delicious if you ask me.

I love this recipe so much because it can be used in so many ways. From danish pastries to homemade pie crust, from sweet applications to savory fillings. It is an all around very versatile and a pretty easy recipe once you get the hang of it.

Tips

• Be careful to not let the dough or the butter get too warm during lamination. You want to work fairly quickly ensuring both stay around the same temperature. Rather than creating butter layers, the butter will just melt into the dough. If either the dough or the butter does get too warm, stick it in the fridge for 10-30 minutes and then continue working on the dough.
• This recipe uses natural yeast rather than commercial yeast to give rise to the dough. 
• Make sure to check out how to make a sourdough starter here if you are just getting started with sourdough.

This post contains affiliate links, which means I make a small commission at no extra cost to you. See my full disclosure here.

FAQ: 

Dough Ingredients:

• All purpose flour
• Sugar
• Active sourdough starter, bubbly and active. You can not use sourdough starter discard for this, recipe unfortunately
• Whole milk
• Egg
• Vanilla extract
• Salt

Butter for laminating

• Unsalted butter: Cold. Make sure to use real butter. The fake stuff won’t work. The layers of butter will create the most flaky pastry.
• All purpose flour 

Egg wash:

• Egg white
• Water

Filling ideas:

• Fruit: Fresh, canned or frozen fruit. If using canned fruit, make sure to drain any excess liquid. For frozen fruit, use from frozen, don’t let it thaw.
• Lemon curd
• Pie filling – This could be sweet pies like apple, cherry, blueberry etc. Or savory pies like chicken pot pie (swap out the biscuits), shepherd’s pie (add it to the top), quiche, etc.
• Jam
• Cream cheese
• Nutella
• Sausage
• Ground beef
• Chocolate

Tools you may need:

Stand mixer with dough hook attachment

Rolling Pin

Baking sheet – I like these stainless steel baking sheets

Pastry brush

Parchment paper

Large mixing bowl

Bench scraper

How To Make Sourdough Pastry: Step-By-Step Instructions

To a bowl of a stand mixer with a dough hook attachment, add the dry ingredients, sourdough starter, milk, egg, and vanilla.

Mix on low speed (1 or 2) for about 5 or so minutes or until it becomes smooth and glossy. This ensures adequate gluten formation has occurred. You can also knead this by hand. Mix and knead to make a shaggy, sticky dough then continue to knead for about 5-10 minutes until smooth and glossy.

Shape into a ball and place in a greased large bowl. Cover with plastic wrap, foil, or a beeswax wrap and place at room temperature (a warm place) for about 4 hours.

Transfer the bowl to the refrigerator to continue fermenting for 8 hours, or up to 3 days.

Laminating the dough

Place the sticks of butter on a large piece of parchment paper. Sprinkle it with a little flour. Mark a 6″ by 8″ rectangle onto the parchment paper.

Fold the parchment paper around the butter with the folds on that 6″ by 8″ rectangle you made, so that the butter will fill the entire envelope once you roll it out (also called a butter packet). It doesn’t need to be perfectly precise. You just want to make sure the pastry dough can enclose the butter when you roll it out for laminating.

With a rolling pin, tap out the butter lightly to start to spread the butter, then roll smooth.

Chill the butter in the refrigerator for 10 minutes. You want the butter to stay nice and cold to create the layers of butter. If the butter gets too warm, it will just melt into the dough.

Remove the pastry dough from the refrigerator and place on a lightly floured surface.

Roll it out into a 16″ by 8″ inch rectangle.

Place the butter rectangle in the middle of the dough. Fold the edges over, so they meet in the middle and completely encasing the butter. Pinch the dough together down the middle seam and sides closed, so none of the butter can escape.

First fold

On a lightly floured work surface, roll the dough, with the butter sealed inside, into a 16″ by 8″ inch rectangle.

Fold each side into the center; then fold one side over the other to make a rectangle with four layers of folded dough. (See picture)

Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and place in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.

Second fold

Roll the dough out again into a 16″ by 8″ inch rectangle.

Fold each side into the center; then fold one side over the other to make a rectangle with 4 layers of dough.

Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and put it back in the refrigerator for 2 hours and up to 12 hours.

Use in any recipe calling for puff pastry.

What can you use sourdough puff pastry for?

• Turnovers
• Pop tarts
• Sweet pies – This makes a great sourdough pie crust recipe (although I have a recipe for that too. Find that here).
• Hand pies
• Savory pies like pot pies.

If you try this recipe and love it, I would love if you gave it 5 stars! Thank you! Tag me on Instagram @farmhouseonboone.

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