Puff pastry – a term that brings fear to many a home cook. I was reminded a couple of weeks ago of my own dread of making puff pastry from scratch when I read this account of summoning courage to make chicken pot pie. A couple of weeks earlier still, I too had conquered my pastry fear and was darned proud of myself.

So yesterday, when the snow was beating down on my windows and covered Beijing in a blanket of white (yes, it was such heavy snow that it didn’t even have time to turn black) and we decided that the only decent thing to do was make a hearty pork-shoulder and Guinness pie wrapped in a flaky crust of buttery deliciousness, I thought I would make a little step by step guide to the scary stuff. The pie is adapted from this Jamie recipe, I replaced the beef with pork because of market availability and skipped the cheese altogether, due to a lack of cheddar availability. But even with those changes it was a truly amazing meal and so comforting in the cold.

It is easy people, trust me.

Here’s what you will need:

4 dl of plain flour
1 1/2 dl cold water
2 tsp strong white vinegar
200g butter

and here’s what you do:

Take your 4 dl of flour and dump it in a bowl. Make a well in the middle.

Add the water, vinegar and about 50g (around a quater) of the butter.

Work the ingredients into a dough and form a ball, which you then wrap in plastic wrap and stick in the fridge for 15 minutes.

After it has rested, take it out and cross it with a sharp knife

When you’ve done that, roll it out to a square approximately 30×30 cm. Slice the rest (150g) of the butter up and place the slices in the middle of your square.

Then fold in the corners so that you get a smaller square envelope with all the butter evenly distributed in the middle.

It should look like this from the front:

and this from the back:

Now, roll it out a bit, making sure all surfaces and your rolling pin are nice and cool. Then comes the fun part, the folding. Fold your dough from right to left, making it 1/3 of the original width but the same length.

Then, fold it twice again, this time at a 90 degree angle, from top to bottom (or bottom to top).

You will end up with a little ball again that need to be wrapped in plastic and stuck in the fridge for another 15 minutes. It should look something like this:

After you take it out of the fridge, roll it out flat again with your rolling pin

and repeat the folding and resting. After it has rested, take it out of the fridge, roll it out and repeat the folding and resting one last time. After the third rest, et voila! You are ready to go. All you need to do after that is roll it out into desired thickness and shape and that is it. Then, you can cocoon steaming, savory pie pie filling in it like I did

or make croissants, delectable desserts - the sky’s the limit! 

Good luck!