If you’re trying to work out how far a sheet of ready rolled pastry will go, or which baking tins to use, you will wonder how big a sheet of ready rolled pastry is.  You might be surprised to learn, therefore, that the packs don’t tend to tell you.

I find it’s important to know how large a sheet of pastry is, so I can calculate how many pies, or quiches, or pasty rounds I could potentially make – and get my dishes out to measure which one’s best to use.

Aldi Greenvale Ready Made Pastry:

I’ve just measured my latest pack, which is the Greenvale brand, picked up from Aldi.  This is the pack that costs typically £0.89.  It’s always handy to get a sheet of ready rolled pastry in before Christmas so you can quickly make sausage rolls vol au vent cases, a quiche or even a Christmas leftovers pasty.

The Aldi ready rolled puff pastry sheet was:

40cm x 25cm, or in inches that’s just under 16″ x 10″.

That wasn’t so hard was it, so why don’t they tell you that on the packet?  Who knows why they wouldn’t want you to know that 🙂

The baking tray in my mini oven/toaster oven is 20cm x 22cm, so I can now instantly see that one sheet of ready rolled pastry would need to be cut into half to fit.  If I cut it into four slices then it’s the perfect fit size for making pizza slices of 10x25cm each, or in quarters would give me 20x12cm

You can roll the pastry out further once you’ve unfurled it from the box, if you need it to be a little larger.  Personally, I just use it in the size it comes out of the box 99% of the time.

Can You Freeze Ready Rolled Pastry?

You can freeze these packs of pastry if you don’t get round to using them.  Inside the box the pastry is sealed in a cellophane wrap.  Just put the wrap, or the whole box, into the freezer.

To use, you will need to defrost it, so take it out of the freezer and put it into the fridge the day before you want to use it.

Cut Pastry Before You Freeze

What I sometimes do is cut the pastry sheet before I freeze it – to fit the dishes I usually use it in. Or, I’ll sometimes cut it into half.  By doing this, I can defrost just the amount I need, rather than the whole sheet.  A 20 cm x 25 cm piece, or 10 cm x 25cm strip is more useful to me than the whole sheet.  A 10 cm x 25 cm sheet of pastry can be used to quickly make a wrap, a baked slice or a single pasty.

Christmas Leftovers Ideas

These ready rolled sheets are great to turn Christmas leftovers into pies, or Christmas leftovers pasties.  Also, everybody loves a sausage roll! or what about New Year’s Eve vol au vents – if you’ve bought the puff pastry variation.

Puff Pastry, Making Vol Au Vent Cases

My food cheats tip for making vol au vent cases with sheets of puff pastry is to simply make square vol au vent cases!  I also don’t like to “skimp” too much on size, but like a good amount of the filling.

1. One sheet of puff pastry, at ~16″ x ~10″ can be sliced into 15 pieces that are roughly square shaped and roughly 3″ square.  You need three pieces per case, so one sheet of this ready made pastry would make five complete vol au vent cases.
2. Put five to one side, you’ll not be cutting these any more.  The other ten squares of pastry need to have the middles cut out of them – these will become the holes that you stuff with the vol au vent filling, so make them as large as you can.  Retain the small circles (or squares) you cut out.
3. Line a baking tray with the paper/foil of your choice.
4. Lay down one square of pastry and egg wash it.  Lay one square that has a hole cut out on top and egg wash that layer. Add the second piece with a hole in it on top of the second and egg wash that.  Your vol au vent case is now one solid piece at the base and two stacked on top.  Transfer the vol au vent cases to your lined baking tray, as well as the cut out small circles.
5. Bake in a pre-heated oven at 170°C-180°C (fan assisted oven) for about 10-15 minutes until the cases have risen and browned to just how you like them.  Remove the cases from the oven and leave to cool.  Pop them into an airtight container until you want to use them.

To serve: Fill each case with your vol au vent filling and pop one of the small circles on top.  You’ll have five small circles left over which you can scoff secretly….

Among my favourite vol au vent fillings are egg/salad cream, chicken curry, egg/sausage, pizza, crab salad and turkey!  You can even cheat on your fillings by buying supermarket ready made pots of sandwich fillings if you want a lot of variety in small quantities.