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Today is another recipe that I love for Thanksgiving (or any day). If you love it too, maybe share it with a friend?

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Hello, happy Wednesday, how is our Thanksgiving prep going? This year it is just Marco and me, which makes my prep pretty minimal. If I were cooking for a group of people I would set out two things for them to nibble on while I finish making dinner, a cheese board and Butternut Squash Bites. In fact, I will still set out those two things just for Marco and me because I love them both. I am extra excited about today’s recipe for a few reasons:

It includes puff pastry and who doesn’t love puff pastry?
We are not making the puff pastry and that saves us hours.
They can be prepped in advance and popped in the oven right before or as guests arrive, making us look like we are really on top of things (which we are).
These bites are incredibly delicious.

We are going to jump right into it and break down today’s Butternut Squash Bites.

Not all puff pastry is created equal

Puff pastry (pâte feuilletée) is an ultra-light and flakey laminated dough that is used for sweet and savory dishes. Think of croissants dough minus the yeast. As with croissants, making puff pastry requires a little bit of skill and a lot of time. It’s a pain in the ass to do for one dish. Luckily we can get really great puff pastry frozen and ready to go from the grocery store.

Traditionally puff pastry is made of butter, flour, water, and salt. That’s it. Our main ingredient here is butter and the better the butter, the better the puff pastry. The best store-bought puff pastry is Dufour. I stand by that statement 100%.

It is the priciest of the four I am going to mention but it is worth every penny. I almost always have a box in my freezer because I can pull it out and make a really impressive dish in no time. It is my favorite hosting hack. It is made with real butter, tastes great, and has beautiful layers. Whole Foods always has it as well as Sprouts.

Around the holidays, Trader Joe’s sells their own all-butter puff pastry. I have used it before and it is surprisingly awesome but because you can only get it a few months out of the year, it is hard to find. If you see them in the freezer section, stock up!

The most widely available brand is Pepperidge Farm. I have used Pepperidge Farm a bunch when I can’t get Dufour and it’s actually great. I have found them to be a little inconsistent with big patches of flour and the sheets not being even but they always get the job done. The biggest difference with Pepperidge Farm puff pastry is that it is made with oil instead of butter. This keeps the cost down but also means it lacks that delicious buttery flavor and mouthfeel. If this is what ya got, no sweat but I’ll always recommend splurging for an all-butter puff pastry.

For my gluten-free peeps, Schär makes GF frozen puff pastry. I haven’t used it because Marco is still technically allergic to the sunflower oil in it but we will be testing it out this Thanksgiving because he is dying to try these Butternut Squash Bites. It uses corn and rice as a substitution for flour and is made with oil instead of butter but that doesn’t mean it won’t be nice and flaky. I’ll report back with our thoughts but if you are GF and haven’t had puff pastry in years (like Marco) it’s totally worth trying.

Working with puff pastry

The first thing you have to do is defrost it in the fridge. Frozen puff pastry is brittle and will snap. We can’t work with it frozen but we also can’t work with it warm. It is crucial for the puff pastry to stay cold during this whole process. There are a few breaks where we chill it back in the fridge, do not skip these. When the pastry warms, the butter layer can mix with the flour layers and the end result can be less puffy. Plus it’s harder to work with.

Something I started doing with pastry and pie doughs is rolling them on top of a piece of parchment. This allows me a little extra insurance during the process. If I need to chill the dough, I can easily slip the parchment onto a tray. I don’t have to worry about anything sticking to the counter and can always peel the parchment off the back easily if there is sticking. Plus it makes cleaning up a bit easier.

Start by dusting a sheet of parchment the size of a half sheet tray (18x13) with flour. Unfold the puff pastry and place it in the center, dust the top with more flour, and roll it out to fill the sheet. About two inches longer and wider. This gives us a little more surface area, creating more bites. Pop it in the fridge and chill it for 10 minutes.

Grab your set of round cutters and pull out a 2.75-inch cutter and a 2-inch cutter. Use the larger cutter and cut as many circles as you can. I get 20 circles per sheet. If I rolled it a little longer I would be able to get 24. You can do that if you want! Transfer those circles to a sheet tray lined with clean parchment and chill for another 10 minutes.

#26: Butternut Squash Bites

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