Making true puff pastry can be pretty laborious. The stages of folding, rolling and chilling over and over make it a labour of love and often mean popping to the shops for some pre-made puff is the order of the day.

For when you fancy making from scratch and don't have time or inclination to make the proper puffy thing (if you do want to make it my recipe is here) here is the rough puff alternative.

Ingredients:

2 cups all purpose/plain flour
1 cup butter
3/4 cup cold water
Salt

Method:

Break the butter into chunks that are no smaller that about 1/2 inch cubes and throw in with the salt seasoned flour.

Pour in the cold water little by little, stirring into the flour and butter until it comes together as a lumpy dough. I don't usually refer to my pictures as instructional but the second picture above is the sort of thing you are aiming for.

Tumble your dough our onto a floured surface. You may have some loose flour, crumble and bits of butter that are not part of the dough mass but that's fine, they will come together. Scoop everything together and knead as little as possible until you have one big lump. you should be able to see chunks of butter here and there which is exactly what you want!

Roll out the dough to about 1/2 inch thick, aiming for a rough rectangle. With the rectangle laying widthways in front of you, take the right edge and fold it in, to 1/3 of the way into the pastry's left edge. Fold the left edge over to meet the new right side edge. You should have a new smaller rectangle/square that has three layers. Think of it as folding a fancy letter to fit in a envelope.

Roll out your new three layered rectangle to about 1/2 thick and repeat the process. Do this 3 or 4 more times, if any chunks of butter 'fall out' of the pastry just blob it back onto the dough and crack on, this is called 'rough puff' for a reason!

Chill the pasty mid folding if its very warm in your kitchen or you notice the butter melting and it becomes greasy. Rough puff is super quick to make so it shouldn't have time to melt, although my kitchen it dealing with temperatures nearing 90F so maybe a mini mid fold chill is advisable.

When you've competed your folds and rolls, chill the finished dough, wrapped in cling film or greaseproof/waxed paper for about half an hour before rolling out and using for many and various wonderful pastry projects!