By: Noah Barton
Spring is coming and that can only mean one thing: Brunch! Easter and Mother’s Day are right around the corner. The worst part of brunch for me was that it was the only morning shift I ever worked. You’d get all set on a schedule of working until 11 pm and sleeping in until 10 and then…Bam! Sunday hits and you have to be at work at 7 am. That always amounted to groggy cooks, lots of people calling in sick and more stress than a late-morning breakfast should merit.
One way to alleviate the stress of the coming spring holiday brunches is by incorporating easy-to-use Pillsbury™ Puff Pastry dough products. Puff pastry is a simple way to create upscale presentations that impress your customers with minimal effort. I can picture puff on all areas of an Easter brunch. It would make a great appetizer cut and baked into vol-au-vents filled with seafood, egg salad or mushroom cream sauce. You could blind bake squares of puff pastry and use them as a unique base for eggs benedict. Or you can wrap sheets of puff pastry around sides of salmon for an easy bake and slice entrée.
Of course, puff pastry always finds its home on the dessert table where it can be formed into homemade Danishes and pastries, baked and layered into Napoleons, or used as the crust underneath a flan.
Best of all, many of these recipes can be prepared the day before so you can get those precious extra moments of sleep. The army might do more before 9 am than most people do all day, but chefs know that the army could sleep in if they had finished their mise en place when they were supposed to.
Ready to perfect your puff pastry? Learn how to with this video tutorial.