AGN -Chapter 419 Puff Pastry Dough

Egg tarts are a pastry that every Chinese person is familiar with.

From the budget version sold in small shops for 2.5 yuan each—where the filling shows no caramel color, just a pale yellow sign of cost-cutting—to the slightly more expensive but widely praised and consistently quality-controlled standard version from places like KFC, and then to various new “blind box” versions from cake shops ranging from cheap to expensive with no guarantee of taste, egg tarts are one of the most common pastries around.

So, had Qin Huai ever made such a common pastry?

He had.

To be honest, although he had made them before, Qin Huai’s process was even more cut corners than Zhao Cheng’an’s. He directly bought ready-made tart shells and egg tart filling from the supermarket, then baked a batch of so-called finished egg tarts at home with Qin Luo using an oven.

As everyone knows, Qin Huai was not good at making puff pastry-type desserts.

Making puff pastry requires preparing puff pastry dough. Puff pastry dough is a general term for dough used in all laminated pastries. It is made by mixing water, oil, and flour and kneading them into dough. Dry oil dough, on the other hand, is made only from oil and flour.

Puff pastry dough can further be divided into dark puff, bright puff, and semi-dark semi-bright puff. Bright puff, depending on technique, can be further divided into large-wrap puff and small-wrap puff.

Sounds very professional and hard to understand, doesn’t it?

When Qin Huai first saw this explanation in a pastry encyclopedia, he didn’t understand it either. Compared to buns, dumplings, various cakes, and simple pastries that could be understood from recipes, learning puff pastry-based desserts purely from text and images was basically wishful thinking.

At least for Qin Huai’s talent, the pastry encyclopedia didn’t make sense to him when he was young. And even if he had understood it, it wouldn’t have mattered—his family didn’t even own an oven until his second year of high school. Without tools, even the best cook is helpless.

After the family finally bought an oven, Qin Huai bought some semi-finished products from the supermarket and baked egg tarts with Qin Luo for fun. Later, he found video tutorials online and slowly explored the basics, eventually managing simple puff pastries like basic crisp biscuits and peach crisps.

As for egg tarts…

To be honest, before coming to Zhiwei Ju, Qin Huai had never associated egg tarts with puff pastry. When thinking of puff pastry desserts, what came to mind were elegant, intricate pastries like lotus crisps, apple crisps, pear crisps, mandarin duck crisps, and so on. Egg tarts… to him, were just a standard item in cake shops.

It was unexpected that Chef Zhou, the top white-case chef, had recently been practicing egg tarts as a way to study new directions in puff pastry. Of course, Qin Huai himself was enjoying them quite a bit too. Who could refuse a few top-tier egg tarts that could beat 100% of others during afternoon tea?

But egg tarts, while seemingly simple, are not that simple.

If you really want to make them easy, you could just do what Qin Huai did back then—buy tart shells and filling from the supermarket and bake them at home. That counts as making egg tarts too.

But if you make it complicated, the difficulty is not low either.

At their core, egg tarts are a kind of Western custard pie made with egg-based filling. According to Zhao Cheng’an’s explanation, egg tarts first appeared in Britain, where a similar food made from milk, sugar, eggs, and spices existed as early as the Middle Ages.

Later, egg tarts were introduced to Hong Kong, where they were continuously improved by generations of pastry chefs and became one of the famous “Four Heavenly Kings” of Cantonese pastries. Chef Zhou’s idea of studying Western pastries starting from egg tarts was actually quite correct, because egg tarts, as Western pastries, have become somewhat “Chinese-style” over time.

The evolution of egg tarts is essentially the evolution of the crust. Early egg tart crusts were thick and heavy. After generations of refinement, pastry chefs transformed them into flaky, crisp shells with a lighter texture. When paired with a creamy filling, the taste layers unfold one after another—sweet but not cloying, rich but gentle.

It can even be said that the upper limit of an egg tart depends on its crust. The filling is just an accessory. The crust determines how delicious the filling can become.

Now that Chef Zhou had asked Qin Huai to make egg tarts, Qin Huai felt there had been a misunderstanding—he probably thought Qin Huai was all-round and could make anything. But egg tarts…

Well, they weren’t actually that hard. In theory, Qin Huai could make them, but he simply hadn’t done so before.

The pastry encyclopedia didn’t include egg tarts, and Qin Luo never asked for them either. If she wanted them, the cheap bakery near school sold them for three yuan each, five yuan for two.

Although they didn’t taste great and the crust was quite poor, they were cheap, and if you got them fresh out of the oven, they were still quite fragrant.

Qin Huai looked at Chef Zhou and showed a slightly troubled expression in his heart, but remained calm on the surface.

“I can try making egg tarts,” he said. “But Chef Zhou, I’ve basically never made this type of pastry before.”

Chef Zhou nodded slightly, still very gentle, with no sign of displeasure.

“I know. I heard from Xiao Tan that you’re not good at puff pastry and don’t usually make it.”

“When you first came, I only asked you to make your most skilled dishes. These past few days, you’ve seen quite a lot, so I want to see what your least skilled pastry looks like.”

It was as if Chef Zhou was practically saying: I know this is your weak point, and whatever you make, I won’t criticize you harshly. I’m a very tolerant teacher.

With that reassurance, Qin Huai relaxed.

It wasn’t that he couldn’t handle criticism—he had been scolded plenty in the orphanage and at school. He had a strong mentality.

He was just worried that Chef Zhou would mock his egg tarts, and that tomorrow those remarks would be spread across Zhiwei Ju through Tan Wei’an’s mouth.

He trusted Tan Wei’an’s ability very much.

Although Qin Huai hadn’t seen him much these days and hadn’t heard any gossip from him, he had already heard countless phrases like: “I heard from Xiao Tan…”

Today, Chef Zhou even specially asked Tan Wei’an to assist Qin Huai. Qin Huai had full confidence in his memory—and his mouth.

Qin Huai followed Chef Zhou into the low-temperature area.

He rarely came here. These past few days, he had mostly been watching Chef Zhou make egg tarts, and the process was already very familiar to him.

The egg custard preparation was simple—basically anyone could do it.

The dough, however…

He understood the theory, but practice was another matter.

To make tart shells, one had to use the “sanding method,” ensuring butter and dough were fully integrated. Ideally, the fat particles in the butter should wrap tightly around the dough to prevent gluten formation. During kneading, it was crucial to avoid trapping too much air—too many air bubbles would guarantee failure.

But too little air would also ruin it.

The reason Su Qian had been scolded so badly these days was precisely because he hadn’t balanced this properly during kneading. Puff pastry desserts depend heavily on this step: how butter is incorporated, how temperature is controlled, how air is managed… these are things you can’t really learn just from videos or books. They require a master’s hands-on teaching and repeated practice.

Qin Huai clearly didn’t have that.

That was why he was not good at puff pastry—and also why his knife skills hadn’t improved much.

Standing at the cooking station, Qin Huai felt more nervous than he had in a long time.

For a moment, he even empathized with the apprentices at Zhiwei Ju. He suddenly understood why, when he used to follow the head physician during kitchen inspections, the apprentices didn’t even dare to look him in the eye.

Back then, the apprentices were only being tested on their dishes.

Now, Chef Zhou was standing right next to Qin Huai, watching him make egg tarts.

Compared to that, Su Qian actually had quite strong mental resilience. He knew he would definitely be scolded every time he made pastries, yet he still persisted, steadily continuing to practice.

Qin Huai first reviewed everything he had seen over the past few days in his mind.

Only when he began to truly recall did he realize he had actually seen a great deal. It wasn’t just about following Chef Zhou every day to eat pastries, or chatting with Zhao Cheng’an and the others, or helping Zhou Yan repeatedly taste her Jade-White Fresh Shrimp Rolls.

He had seen how everyone made pastries. In those conversations, beyond gossip, family matters, children’s schooling, and extracurricular classes, he also heard their thoughts on pastry-making—their journeys, their shifts in mentality, how they progressed step by step from apprentices to where they were today.

When Zhou Yan kept asking Qin Huai to taste her Jade-White Fresh Shrimp Rolls, she would always mutter about what she had thought of trying, what she had already tried, how this pastry should be made at her level, and how it would turn out according to her style.

She was thinking, struggling, but also expressing herself and articulating her ideas.

Qin Huai even thought of Zhao Cheng’an’s lantern-shaped pleated buns he had just seen. Zhao Cheng’an’s hands were steady, his fundamentals solid. When making the buns, he was methodical and precise, almost without flaws, while also fully demonstrating his excellent aesthetic sense in pastry craftsmanship.

Of course, what Qin Huai thought about most was still Chef Zhou’s process of making egg tarts.

Although Chef Zhou rarely spoke while Qin Huai observed—he was almost completely silent—Qin Huai was always eating something at the time, either pastries freshly made by Zhao Cheng’an or snacks handed to him by Wang Jiayi, with a cup of warm tea to cut the greasiness always placed beside him.

Because the low-temperature room was quite cold, the tea cooled quickly, and the apprentices would promptly replace it.

Qin Huai even remembered that Chef Zhou preferred Longjing tea; the tea beside him was always Longjing.

And what Qin Huai remembered most was Chef Zhou’s technique.

As he replayed it in his mind, he suddenly realized Chef Zhou’s kneading process was actually quite slow, with every detail clearly displayed. When he watched it before, he hadn’t thought much of it. But now, as he actively recalled and replayed it in his mind, it felt like watching a tutorial video.

Almost like it just needed commentary.

No—there actually was commentary. Zhao Cheng’an and the others, as Chef Zhou’s disciples, provided it in the form of casual conversations. Every time Qin Huai finished eating egg tarts and came back, Wang Jiayi or Zhao Cheng’an would smile and ask if the egg tarts were good, while casually commenting on Chef Zhou’s lamination technique and kneading method.

Qin Huai stood at the cooking station for a long time, almost lost in thought.

Tan Weian, standing beside him, didn’t even know what to assist with anymore. He could only stare blankly at Qin Huai, his face practically saying: Bro, are you having some kind of enlightenment here? Isn’t this a bit against the rules? This is Zhiwei Ju—my turf. Shouldn’t it be my turn to have an epiphany?

Clearly, it wasn’t Tan Weian’s turn.

Qin Huai moved.

He said to Tan Weian, “Is the butter melted? What about the flour? Bring me the flour.”

“…Oh, right, right,” Tan Weian responded.

It was awkward—he had almost forgotten he was supposed to be helping, not just watching Qin Huai have a breakthrough.

Qin Huai began kneading the dough.

In making puff pastry dough, Qin Huai had a strong theoretical foundation, and now he was putting it into practice.

His movements were gentle. He knew that properly incorporating butter into the dough without failure required skill—he just hadn’t previously known exactly what that skill was. He simply imitated Chef Zhou’s kneading from memory: his hand movements, his speed, his angles, and tried to replicate it.

He felt he was doing fairly well.

Quite good, in fact—no obvious problems.

The butter was blending well, no gluten formation. Air bubbles were well controlled—neither too many nor completely absent.

Qin Huai felt that many of the problems he used to encounter when making pastries had suddenly disappeared. It was as if he had unexpectedly grasped many things about dough handling. Puff pastry, which he had always struggled with, no longer felt as difficult.

And this feeling was not like the sudden “epiphany” he once had while cutting vegetables. This was more like a gradual accumulation finally reaching fruition. It was as if he had already been at this level for a long time—like he had done countless practice papers and was now simply sitting for an exam that naturally matched his ability. And now that the exam had come, he was answering smoothly, about to submit a solid paper.

Qin Huai placed the dough into the refrigerator to rest and began preparing the egg tart filling.

Tan Weian, as the helper, was basically useless at this point. He could only silently hand over ingredients while watching Qin Huai—and occasionally glancing at Chef Zhou.

Qin Huai looked serious and focused. Chef Zhou, on the other hand, wore a kind and gentle smile.

Tan Weian thought: Where the hell did I get sent? Is this still Zhiwei Ju?

Perhaps Chef Zhou’s gentle expression gave Tan Weian the illusion that he could speak casually. He couldn’t help but ask Qin Huai quietly:

“What exactly have you been doing these past few days? Didn’t you say on WeChat that you were just eating pastries and gossiping?”

Qin Huai continued mixing the egg tart filling and nodded. “I was eating pastries and gossiping. Chef Zhou just had me observe from the side and didn’t let me do anything myself. I mostly hung out with Zhao Cheng’an and the others. In the afternoons, I’d come here to watch Chef Zhou make egg tarts—and eat egg tarts.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Your tart shells are so good… why have you never made egg tarts before?” Tan Weian asked, struck by sudden realization.

“I didn’t even know my tart shells were this good,” Qin Huai replied. “I just never made egg tarts before. You know I’m not good at puff pastry. And Qin Luo doesn’t really like egg tarts either. When she craves them, she just buys them from the bakery. Plus, Ou Yang gave us a bunch of bakery cards—we couldn’t even finish using them.”

Tan Weian suddenly understood. So it was all Ou Yang’s fault. Those bakery cards had spoiled Qin Huai, letting him casually buy egg tarts anytime, so he never bothered to make them.

Damn it.

Tan Weian also liked egg tarts a lot. If he had known Qin Huai was this good at them, he would have begged him to make more back when they were at Yunzhong Canteen.

He opened his mouth to say something else, but Chef Zhou, who had been smiling gently all along, finally seemed a little impatient. He glanced at Tan Weian and said calmly: “Xiao Tan, don’t you see the tea has gone cold?”

Tan Weian immediately went to replace it.