Why Pastry Chefs Swear By This Store

The toughest part about hosting isn’t creating the perfect menu or designing a gorgeous tablescape; it’s grocery shopping. Picking out the right ingredients can make or break your holiday feast, especially when it comes to dessert.

If you’ve committed to making a pietart, or pastry for Thanksgiving but are feeling a little stressed, you can save yourself some time and energy by buying pre-made dough at the grocery store.

There are dozens of pie crust and pastry dough options lining the freezer aisles now, making it tricky to figure out which one will yield the golden, flaky results you want. (We’ve even tested several store-bought pie crusts ourselves, and the winner of our taste test is a reliable choice that won’t let you down.)

This year, we decided to consult an expert to see if we were overlooking any excellent options. So we reached out toSofia Schliebenthe corporate pastry chef at hospitality group JF Restaurants and a pastry chef with over a decade of experience at esteemed restaurants, for her recommendation.

Schlieben had one clear recommendation for us, and it’s a name some baking aficionados may already be familiar with: Dufour Puff Pastry. Since 1985, this New York City-based brand has been helping home bakers save time by providing an ultra-rich, layered puff pastry dough that’s available right in the freezer section of your grocery store.

“Dufour puff pastry is a true NYC institution,” Schlieben says. “Dufour has done such a great job maintaining the same standards it had when it opened as a family business.”

What makes Dufour different?

According to Schlieben, Dufour stands out because it’s one of the few brands that uses real butter in its dough. The award-winning product is made in the same way as it would be in a professional kitchen by adding a giant block of butter to the center of the dough. The dough is then folded around the butter and rolled out multiple times, creating dozens of thin, delicate layers of dairy sandwiched inside the dough.

In contrast, many other store-bought puff pastries and pie doughs rely on vegetable shortening to create their signature layers. While these still produce flaky results, they lack the same depth of flavor, and you’ll taste a noticeable difference when you enjoy Dufour.

“It is a product used equally at home and in professional kitchens. People gravitate toward it because of its consistency and high-quality ingredients,” Schlieben notes. “Puff pastry and pie dough are a labor of love that require careful attention at every step, and although it is really only three ingredients, each one needs to be the highest quality.”

Schlieben also appreciates that the brand is thoughtful about the product’s construction, all the way down to the packaging. “Some brands use thin tubes, but the wider flat box (Dufour) uses means the product is folded less, and therefore the integrity of the puff is undamaged,” she explains. “That is not as important for pie dough, but it becomes increasingly important for pastries like vol-au-vents or mille-feuille.”

How can you use Dufour?

While it’s not labeled as “pie crust,” you can indeed use puff pastry for pies. It’ll make gloriously airy top crusts, and if you use it for the bottom crust, just make sure to blind bake the dough first to prevent it from getting soggy.

Another benefit of using this brand is that it offers a few different products to meet all your dessert needs. The standard puff pastry is the brand’s signature, but it also offers vegan, dairy-free, and gluten-free pastry options to adjust for different dietary needs. (Although you should note that vegan and dairy-free options won’t use real butter.)

If you’re making a savory quiche or sweet tart for your celebrations, the brand offers pâté brisée-style tart shells in the freezer section, which produce a crisp and tender shortcrust pastry.

“It is always an easy reach for me on a day off because I know exactly what I am going to get and that it will be great,” Schlieben emphasizes. “It’s simply delicious.”