do you thaw frozen puff pastry before baking or not??

Your rushed days are the correct days :) Shaped puff bakes STRAIGHT from the freezer, always.

Puff rises on one thing only - solid cold butter hitting a hot oven and turning to steam, which forces the layers apart. Frozen pieces get the full steam blast inside the dough. A thawed piece has soft butter that just melts and soaks in before any steam can work. Flat, greasy, soggy base... exactly what you've seen.

Timings that work for us: patties 30-40 min around 200°C, palmiers and cheese straws 20-25. And shaped unbaked puff keeps a good month frozen if the temperature is stable - back of the freezer, not the door shelf that warms up every time someone opens it. Dough-stage keeps a month too. The croissant-family doughs are shorter, about 2 weeks, yeast slowly loses strength even frozen.

Same product, one difference - almost all commercial frozen puff is margarine-based, not butter. Cheaper and way more forgiving in a warm kitchen. Totally fine for savoury work. The flavour gap shows most in plain stuff like palmiers. Same rule applies though: work cold, bake from frozen.