PHONG PIAH

Makes 20 puffs

Ingredients:
(recipe adapted from here)

Chinese Flaky Pastry: Water Dough:
120g bread flour
120g cake flour
50g icing sugar mixture
90g butter
70ml water, adjust as necessary

Lard Dough:
120g cake flour
60g lard

Filling:
225g icing sugar mixture
60g maltose *
90g cake flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
20g white sesame seeds, toasted
2 tablespoons fried shallot flakes
60ml shallot oil
15ml water, adjust as necessary
extra white sesame seeds, for topping (optional)

* When getting maltose out of the container, it is easiest to use wet fingers to dig/pull out the required amount, this way the maltose doesn’t stick to your fingers.
 
Preparation:

Filling (please refer to his blog for the step by step pics):
1. Put icing sugar in a mixing bowl and place the maltose on top of the sugar. Scatter some icing sugar on the maltose so it doesn’t stick to your fingers and dig a hole in the maltose to make a figure ‘0’, or like a donut shape. Pull the maltose to enlarge the hole, just like making noodles by pulling the dough. Twist the maltose so it now becomes a figure ‘8’. Fold the ‘8’ to become ‘0’ again. Pull the ‘0’ to enlarge and twist into ‘8’ again. Continue and repeat the pulling, twisting and folding of the maltose until the maltose becomes very thin threads.

 Chinese Flaky Pastry:
1. For the Water Dough: Put both types of flour and sugar in a mixing bowl, rub in butter until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Slowly add just enough water to form a soft but non-sticky dough. Knead until smooth, form into a ball, wrap in cling film and put into the refrigerator for about 20 minutes before using.

2. For the Lard Dough: Rub lard into the flour and then knead into a soft dough. If it is too soft, chill in the refrigerator to harden a bit. If it is too hard, knead it a bit more until you get soft dough about the same pliability as the water dough. It is important that the malleability of the lard dough should be about the same as the water dough when making the Chinese flaky pastry.

3. Divide the water dough and the lard dough respectively into 20 equal portions each and round them all into small balls.

4. Follow the preparation of the Hidden-Layering Flaky Pastry as shown in Huaiyang Flaky Pastry up to step 17.

5. Preheat oven to 200°C. Line baking sheets with baking paper. 

6. With the heel of your palm, gently press the filled dough down to flatten it.

7. Arrange the pastry apart on the lined baking sheets. Sprinkle with a little extra white sesame seeds on top of each puff dough if desired, pressing the seeds lightly to stick to the dough.