Puff-pastry mushroom pasties: sixteen to go with barszcz
Christmas Eve pasties with no pastry to make: shop puff pastry, a filling of button mushrooms browned hard over high heat with soaked dried mushrooms, rolled into logs and baked golden. Two things decide the result: the filling must be cold and dry, and the pastry ice cold when it goes into the oven. Then the layers separate and each pasty comes out light and flaky.
Your own work in that: 45 min.
- Mushrooms soaking 30 min
- Filling 25 min
- Filling cooling 20 min
- Rolling 20 min
- Baking 25 min
Step by step
0 / 7 done
Soak the dried mushrooms
Rinse the mushrooms and cover with 200 ml warm water for 30 minutes, then simmer them in the same water 20 minutes, until tender (start step 2 meanwhile). Drain, keep the liquid for the barszcz and chop the mushrooms very finely.
Ingredients: 20 g dried forest mushrooms · 400 g button mushrooms · 2 pcs onions · 40 g butter · 200 g sauerkraut · 2 tbsp breadcrumbs · 1 tsp dried marjoram · 1 tsp salt · 1 tsp black pepper
Half an hour in water, then simmered
Brown the mushrooms, then the onion
Chop the button mushrooms finely and fry over high heat in batches, undisturbed for the first 2 minutes, until their water evaporates and they begin to brown — 10 minutes in all. Add the butter and the finely diced onion, fry 6 minutes, then add the chopped dried mushrooms, the stewed sauerkraut if using, marjoram, salt and pepper. Stir in the breadcrumbs.
TipMushrooms are 90 % water. Put into a cool pan all at once they stew grey; over high heat and in batches they evaporate and brown. The breadcrumbs bind the last of the moisture so the pastry doesn't go soggy underneath.
High heat, in batches, until brown
Cool the filling and roll out the pastry
Cool the filling completely, ideally spread thin on a plate — warm filling melts the butter in the pastry before it reaches the oven. Unroll the cold puff pastry on a lightly floured counter and cut it into 16 rectangles of about 10 × 12 cm.
Ingredients: 2 pcs puff pastry · 1 pcs egg
TipPuff pastry is layers of butter between layers of dough. If the butter warms, it soaks into the dough and instead of a hundred leaves you get one flat slab. Work fast, and if the pastry softens, put it back in the fridge for 10 minutes.
Cold pastry, sixteen rectangles
Fill and roll
Along the longer edge of each rectangle lay about 2 tablespoons of filling in a line, leaving a 1.5 cm border. Roll tightly into a log and place on a lined tray seam side down, 3 cm apart.
Two spoons of filling, a tight log, seam down
Egg-wash and cut vents
Heat the oven to 200 °C. Brush the logs with beaten egg on top only and cut 3 diagonal slashes in each with a sharp knife, through the top layer of pastry alone. Chill the tray for 10 minutes before it goes into the oven.
TipThe slashes are chimneys for steam. Without them the steam bursts the pasty somewhere random and the filling runs onto the tray. Keep the egg off the sides: running down, it glues the layers together and stops them separating.
Egg on top, three vents each
Bake until golden
Bake 20–25 minutes at 200 °C, until the pasties are clearly risen and deep golden and you can see separated leaves at the cut ends. Pale pasties are raw inside — bake to colour, not to the clock.
Risen, deep golden, visible leavesServe with barszcz
Cool on a rack 10 minutes and serve warm with a cup of clear beetroot barszcz. Reheat baked ones 6 minutes at 180 °C, never in the microwave. Raw logs freeze for a month: bake from frozen, 5 minutes longer.
Warm, beside a cup of barszcz
Before you start
With meat
Instead of button mushrooms, 250 g minced meat browned with onion, seasoned with marjoram and pepper and bound with 2 tablespoons of breadcrumbs. An everyday version, not a Christmas Eve one.
With sauerkraut and mushrooms
Stew the sauerkraut 30 minutes in the mushroom soaking water, squeeze and chop it, then mix half and half with the mushroom filling. The classic Christmas Eve filling for barszcz.
They burst open
The filling was warm or too wet, the seam ended up on top, or the vents were missing. Cool the filling, add a tablespoon of breadcrumbs and lay the logs seam side down.
Nutrition
per 100 gStep photos are computer-generated from the recipe.
