How to make empanada dough (Masa de Hojaldre)

I have watched my mom (pictured in the photos) make this dough my entire life and today she called me to help her make it. My best friend Albert (who is an awesome chef) asked me to write down the recipe for him. So here it is finally with pictures and everything! :)

Today my mom wanted to make a lot of dough in order to freeze it and have it ready for use. She called me saying that she didn't have any left in her freezer (the travesty)  and was really wanting to make empanadas.

This recipe makes 7 rolls of dough and can be made into about 140 empanadas.

Ingredients

• 5 lbs of unbleached flour (plus have extra around to use as needed)
• 2 eggs @ room temperature
• 4 cups of lukewarm water with juice of 1 medium lemon and 1 teaspoon of salt
• box of Maizena (corn starch)
• 2 sticks of margarine
• Crisco

Put the 5 lbs of flour formed into a well on your work surface. Crack the 2 eggs into the center of the well and add 12 tablespoons of Crisco. (shown)

Squish the eggs and Crisco together with your hand and add a little of the water/lemon mixture.  Begin to form the dough incorporating the flour little by little and adding the water/lemon mixture as needed for moisture.  (I didn't get a picture of this part because my hands were full of dough.)  Since this is a lot of dough, we had to divide it in half and each of us kneaded it. The dough will be very soft when finished. 


Divide it into 7 equal pieces (shown together) and cover it with plastic wrap.

Let the dough rest a little while preparing the margarine spread to use once you roll out the first piece. Put the margarine in a bowl and add flour as needed so that it makes a cream. My mom says that the texture is like face cream - I'm guessing ponds!? 


Use a rolling pin to roll out the first piece of dough into a rectangle (almost a square) on your board. It should be fairly thin.



Then spread a thin layer of the creamed margarine onto it. Finish this off by sprinkling a light layer of corn starch over the rolled out dough.  We used a strainer (shown) because we didn't have a sifter.













Roll it starting from the shorter edge very tight (this is the critical piece that takes a lot of practice). You roll it very tight, pulling the roll and compressing it as you roll. I got the hang of it eventually, but I got moved out of the way a lot and shown how its properly done. That's when I took the opportunity to take the picture. :)  I probably should have shot a video too.

When its completely rolled, wrap the roll in plastic wrap (like a burrito) so that air doesn't get in it.

Continue making these rolls with the rest of the pieces of dough using the same process.






We put all of the rolls on a pan, covered them with plastic wrap and put it in the refrigerator for a day and a half before putting it in the freezer.

Each roll of Masa de Hojaldre should give you roughly 20 empanadas.

Finished!  We cleaned up and sat down to drink Mate and chatted about making dough.  I also learned that my mom was shown how to make Masa de Hojaldre from my Tia Isabel's mom who rolled it out perfectly.

This was indeed an accomplishment for me today.  It was so great to finally learn to make it after only watching for so many years...   I have a lot of practicing to do.