Using Commercial Products in the

Production of Cakes and Pastry

Products
Some common commercial products used in cake and pastry
making are:

Pie crusts
Cake mixes
Puff pastry
Phyllo pastry
Advantages to using pre-made products:

Cost
Time
Skill
COST BREAKDOWN

Pepperidge Farm's Frozen Puff Pastry Sheets from Peapod Online Grocery
TOTAL: $4.69
PER OUNCE: $0.27

Homemade Puff Pastry
4 oz unsalted butter, softened, plus 1 oz melted: $1.50
6-3/4 oz unbleached all-purpose flour; more for rolling: $0.41
Generous pinch table salt: $0.01
1 tsp lemon juice: $0.08
TOTAL: $2.00
PER OUNCE: $0.13
TIME BREAKDOWN

Pepperidge Farm's Frozen Puff Pastry Sheets from Peapod
Online Grocery:
Thaw for 30 minutes

Homemade Puff Pastry:
Active time - about 20 minutes; Total time - about 3 1/2 hours
or longer if your dough needs to be chilled more frequently.
Skills

Making home-made puff pastry:
You start off by making a block of pliable butter and wrapping it in an envelope of lean
dough. This butter package is then rolled out, folded like a letter, and rolled out again.
This rolling and folding process, technically called "turns," is repeated six times. By the
end, the dough consists of hundreds of very thin layers of butter separated by
hundreds of very thin layers of dough. During baking, the steam in the butter will
cause the layers to puff up into the crispy, pillowy pastry clouds we know and love.
Keeping the dough and butter chilled is crucial to the whole process and is also what
makes puff pastry so time-consuming. If the butter is too warm, it gets absorbed into
the dough layers. If it's too cold, it breaks and cuts the dough (which is equally
undesirable). To keep it in a happy middle zone, the pastry is chilled for 30 minutes in
between every turn or two.
Disadvantages:

Quality: ingredients used
Quality: final look and taste
Home-Made puff pastry:
Made with butter (more delicious)
Puffier then store-bought

Store-Bought puff pastry:
Made with vegetable shortening (less healthy than butter)
Flatter than home-made