Pâte Feuilletée / Flaky Pastry

We attemped to make this pastry to make the Tarte Tatin on the same page - we gave up halfway through and used a recipe from Culinaria France instead (see the review here). It's as bad as that.

There seemed to be several problems: You're suposed to make a dough with 500g flour, 150ml water and 50g soft butter (we actually used two thirds of these amount, but of course didn't change the ratio of ingredients). This should result in a 'pliable dough' - it wasn't anywhere near there. Instead, it didn't even come together as a dough, just a few crumbs of dough with lots of leftover flour instead. I added another 50ml or so of water to get at least a very dry, hard dough, but nothing you would be able to roll out. I have no idea how I was supposed to be able to do that. Add the butter, instead of folding in into the rolled out dough? Add some more water?

The other thing was that you're supposed to 'knead the remaining butter, it must give up all of its moisture content'. I don't know how he would manage to do that. All I know is that I either manage to melt the butter, or to stir it until creamy. None of which seems to be the desired outcome. For a better pastry recipe (though a Pâte Brisée), see Pâte Brisée / French Shortcrust Pastry from Le Cordon Bleu Complete Cookery Techniques.