Rustic Mustard and Tapenade Batons for French Fridays With Dorie

Here is the next installment from my online cooking group, French Fridays With Dorie.  The group is happily cooking and baking their way through Dorie Greenspan's book Around My French Table.  Except for a few Austin Power's 'Oh Behave' moments, this is an easy and fast recipe that uses purchased frozen puff pastry.  The pastry is defrosted, rolled out and then spread with a wide range of different flavors such as mustard, cheese, tapenade, pesto or whatever you like.  I used a rustic slightly chunky olive tapenade on one sheet of puff pastry and Dijon mustard on the other one.  Today I'm giving you the recipe for the batons because it's already out there on Dorie's blog.  I would make these appetizer batons again for company and serve them with a glass of chilled white wine.  The tapenade that I spread on the puff pastry might have been too chunky because unlike the mustard filling it did sort of leak out while baking.  But, not to worry it all worked out just fine and  made the 'après-eating finger licking' both appropriate and necessary.

Ingredients and Directions for Mustard Batons from Around My French Table

All- purpose flour, for rolling
2 sheets frozen puff pastry, each about 8-1/2 ounces, thawed
1/2 cup Dijon mustard, ( I used 1/4 cup Dijon mustard and 1/4 cup chunky olive tapenade)
1 large egg
Poppy seeds, for topping (optional)


Preheat the oven to 400°F

Line two baking sheets with silicone baking mats or parchment paper.
Have a ruler and a pizza cutter or sharp knife on hand.

Working with one sheet of pastry at a time, roll the dough out on a lightly floured surface until you have a rectangle that's about 12 x 16 inches.  I also like to lightly flour my rolling pin.  Measure the length to find the middle and spread 1/4 cup Dijon mustard over the lower half of the dough, stopping just short of the edges.  Fold the top portion of the dough over the bottom and using the pizza cutter with your ruler as a guide, cut the strips about 1 inch wide.  I left the strips long but you could cut them in half.  Carefully transfer the batons to one of the baking sheets and chill them while you work on the second batch.  (The unbaked batons can be made up this point and frozen tightly wrapped for up to two months. They can then be brushed with the egg wash and baked while still frozen.)

Lightly beat the egg with a splash of cold water and brush all the strips with the glaze.  I sprinkled my mustard batons with poppy seeds and left the tapenade strips plain.

Bake the batons for about 16 minutes total rotating the sheets about mid way through the baking.  I have a convection oven that fits two baking sheets side by side on one rack so I don't have to rotate my baking sheets which is wonderful.

These are good served with white wine, rosé or bubbles.