7 Best Puff Pastry Substitutes

Have you ever wondered how the interior of a croissant is so flaky and light?

The sweet buttery flavor with a crispy texture is what puff pastry is famous for. However, making puff pastry is an extremely complicated and time-consuming process.

Now, what can you use instead of puff pastry?

The best substitutes include pie crust, croissant rolls, phyllo dough, biscuit dough, rough puff pastry, store-bought puff pastry, and blitz puff pastry.

So, let’s learn more about this pastry and see how and when you can use its substitutes.

What’s Puff Pastry?

Puff pastry is one of the most complicated pastries.

It is no easy task to make it from scratch as it involves hours of work. But the result it produces will have you going back to it time and again.

Puff pastry comes from the laminated dough or the dough that alternatively uses butter and dough. It has a light and flaky texture with a crispy exterior and melt-in-your-mouth interior.

Additionally, you can make croissants, beef wellington, Tarte Tatin, galettes, and more from puff pastry.

Best Puff Pastry Substitutes

Let’s see some of the best puff pastry substitutes for the time when you are too lazy to make one.

1. Croissant rolls

The French patisserie is famous for introducing puff pastry and croissants to the world. So it’s only fair that you can easily substitute croissant rolls for puff pastry.

Making croissant rolls at home will only cost you the same time, so it’s always better to go for the store-bought rolls.

You can either get croissant sheets that you can easily cut, fold them and bake. Or you can also go for already made croissant rolls that you just have to bake.

It will have the same light and flaky texture with the sweet, buttery flavor that you won’t notice the difference between them!

2. Phyllo dough

Phyllo dough or also spelled as filo dough is a lot crispier in texture than puff pastry.

Although the composition and thickness of both the products are completely different, phyllo dough makes for a good substitute for puff pastry.

Phyllo sheets are extremely thin and are made from flour, oil, and water. You have to brush a good amount of butter onto it after every layer. Here, the process becomes different from puff pastry as you keep a block of cold butter in a layer, fold it, and then roll it evenly.

The consecutive brushing of butter and the thin texture of phyllo make it a lot crispier.

Phyllo dough is best used to make baklava and tart shells. It’s always better to buy Phyllo sheets from a store than make them at home as this is also a time-consuming process.

3. Biscuit dough

Biscuit dough is probably the best substitute for puff pastry.

It not only delivers the same texture but also gives the same flavor profile. The major difference between them lies in their composition.

If you want to bake a biscuit, then you can keep its thickness less. And if you want to use it as a substitute for puff pastry, then go for a good thickness.

Moreover, make sure that you freeze the biscuit dough before rolling it out and baking. This is exactly how you bake puff pastry.

The constant rolling and folding of biscuit dough will give a similar layered texture as puff pastry. These details will make all the difference while replacing biscuit dough for puff pastry.

4. Pie crust

Pie crust is probably not the best alternative but if you happen to have store-bought pie crusts at home, then there is no harm in using them.

You cannot use it as it is like biscuit dough or phyllo sheets, so you’ll have to work a bit with it. Note that you’ll have to work with larger pieces of cold butter and then keep it in between the sheets.

Follow the similar process of roll, keep the butter in it, fold, and again roll. Repeat this process a couple of times, to achieve the desired results.

It will not give the same flaky and light texture as that of puff pastry. However, as a last resort, you can definitely go ahead with it.

5. Rough puff pastry

People think that rough puff and puff pastry are the same things. However, the difference lies in its process. The entire process is the same apart from the way you fold the butter.

In puff pastry, you keep an entire slab of butter in pastry. However, in rough puff pastry, you cut the butter into cubes and then use it. It makes the whole process much easier. It takes less time as well. The cubes melt easily in the layers making it much less time-consuming.

Moreover, you’ll have the same result of buttery, flaky, light, and sweet pastry. You can use this to make beef wellington, pies, cinnamon buns, etc.

6. Store-bought puff pastry

Bakers look down upon store-bought puff pastries because they don’t use good products and their taste is also entirely different. However, it all depends upon the brand and the products used in the puff pastry.

Make sure that you are going for a butter-based puff pastry rather than shortening. This will ensure a better and delicate taste. Moreover, the difference between a homemade and store-bought will remain very less with a butter-based puff pastry.

If you love to bake but don’t have the time, then these should be your number one preference. There is no limit as to what you can make with it. You can try Nutella puffs, pies, tarts, etc.

Since these are stored in the refrigerator, keep in mind that you have to thaw them before usage.

7. Blitz puff pastry

This isn’t really a specific type of pastry. It is more of a technique. Since, puff pastry takes hours to make, with this technique, you can make your puff pastry in a jiffy.

All you have to do is to blitz the butter in the flour. You can do this in a mixer grinder to make a dough or by hand. This will save a lot of your time since you won’t have to add a butter slab every time you roll.

The rest of the process of folding and rolling stays the same. However, every time you laminate it, you have to make sure that the dough is cold. Additionally, flour the surface properly.

This is the easiest and the best method to make puff pastry. Moreover, the results are also the same, you can try this technique today.

What’s Puff Pastry?