Baking – How to deal with “thawed frozen puff pastry”

Yes, is possible, and not uncommon. You may wish to dock it to prevent excessive rising.

Some pastries are made with puff pastry that is already baked separately, such as the famous Napolean or Mille-Feuille . For example, in this recipe (which uses commercial puff pastry), the instructions are:

Preheat oven to 425°F/220°C. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper or plain brown paper; set aside.

Unfold puff pastry sheet and trim edges to a 9-inch square. Cut pastry into nine 3-inch squares. Transfer pastry squares to the prepared baking sheets; prick pastry. Bake in a preheated oven for 18-23 minutes, or until golden. (Or bake according to package directions.) Carefully remove pastries from baking sheet. Cool on a rack.

I cannot endorse the plain brown paper idea, but the method is fairly standard.

Here is another example, from King Arthur flour, of croissants du patisserie, which is essentially puff pastry baked as a croissant (as opposed to croissants du boulanger, the baker's croissants, which are yeast raised as well as a laminated pastry).

Puff pastry is a laminated dough, with very strong gluten development, so an extra couple of days in the refrigerator should not have caused problems.

450 F seems like a typical temperature, and the time seems in the normal range.

The only thing you have mentioned is that is definitely outside the standard treatment is trimming the edges with a butter knife. Normally, you want to trim or cut puff pastry with a very sharp knife or pizza cutter, in order to cleanly cut through the layers. A blunt knife like a butter knife can mash the layers together, making it hard for them to separate at the edges of the pastry.

Still, this should have lead to lopsided or strangely risen pastry, rather than a complete failure to rise, especially in the center.

The other possibility is that the dough was too warm when you rolled and worked it, or that you rolled it too much, which would work the fat or butter layers into the dough phase, rather than keeping discrete layers of flour then fat, which is what allows the rise.