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Dufour Classic Puff Pastry
Like butta!
By Lisa Gerson

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It was my own fault. I had agreed to make a Valentine’s Day feast of beef Wellington, a retro-gourmet tenderloin preparation that involves the most advanced of culinary endeavors: puff pastry. The traditional creation of puff pastry is a serious, time-consuming business: you mix butter and flour, roll it into a thin sheet, fold it over itself, roll it again, wrap it in wax paper, and refrigerate it for a few hours. Then you repeat these steps four times.

Which is why I found myself at Star Market searching for pre-packaged puff pastry a mere three hours before dinner. After heated discussions with the freezer stockperson, the customer-service employee, and the manager — all of whom kept trying to pass off the great pretender, phyllo dough, as puff pastry — I hightailed it over to Bread & Circus. Behold! There in the freezer was a perfect tin of Dufour Pastry Kitchens’ Classic Puff Pastry ($8.99). A gold ribbon glinted on the left side of the packaging, proclaiming it to be a " NASFT Product Award winner, " whatever that means. And how could I resist the testimonials quoted on the box? The New York Times called it " top-quality puff pastry. " It was described as " the most buttery and flaky pastry you will ever find " by Details magazine (who knew that the magazine was an authority on all things culinary?). At home, the large, frozen rectangle of pastry thawed and unfolded into a blissful puffy dream. The tenderloin practically leapt into its buttery embrace. It baked into a drool-inducing golden-brown shell. Disaster averted.

Dufour Classic Puff Pastry is available at Bread & Circus.

Issue Date: March 8-15, 2001




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