Chilling Pastry Using Ice Blankets

A crucial part of good pastry-making is to control both the fermentation of the dough and the temperature of the butter throughout the makeup process. 

A modern approach is to use “Cryopack® Ice Blankets”. These are available on Amazon and are worth the investment to serious pastry makers. For home bakers or hobbyists, two packs of frozen corn or peas work equally well as ice blankets for small quantities of pastry which is an inexpensive option and yields excellent results. I first saw the use of ice blankets in pastry processing at the Coupe du Monde de la Boulangerie competitions, Paris, in the mid-2000s by team USA’s viennoiserie candidate Peter Yuen and some of the Asian viennoiserie candidates. Ice blankets are excellent for rapidly chilling down laminated pastry as the pastry block is encapsulated top and bottom, physically touching the ice blanket. As a result of this direct contact between pastry and the ice blanket, a very efficient, uniform and rapid chilling of the pastry dough block is possible.

More tips are available in my book, The Art of Lamination: Advanced Technical Laminated Pastry Production.