Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume 2 (62 page)

Roll the dough ¼ to ⅜ inch thick, cut with a 2-inch fluted cutter, and arrange on a dampened baking sheet.
With a 1-inch cutter or a small knife, press a cover outline in the top of the dough, going ⅛
inch deep
. Glaze and bake, following the preceding directions for
fleurons
. When baked and still warm, delicately cut out the cover and remove any uncooked pastry from interiors.

You will have as much dough left over from cutting a vol-au-vent as you have in the vol-au-vent itself
, and almost as much from
bouchées
. You can even make another
vol-au-vent
from these scraps, or half a dozen
bouchées
, or anything else calling for puff pastry.
Demifeuilletée
, the simpler puff pastry, is treated the same way. Puff pastry leftovers are called
rognures
, meaning trimmings or scraps.

Your object is to join the scraps into one piece of dough in such a way that the layers of butter and flour in each scrap are horizontal, as they were when the dough was first made.

Cut the scraps as necessary
.

Arrange them so that they will form a rectangle
. Then paint an edge of each with cold water, overlap it slightly upon its neighbor, and seal the seam with the balls of your fingers.