Home › Pastry › Puff Paste (Take three-fourths pound)
Puff Paste (Take three-fourths pound)
Take three-fourths pound of butter (be sure that it is of the best quality), free it from salt (by working it in water), form it in a square lump, and place it in flour for half an hour to harden; place one pound of flour in a bowl, take two ounces of butter and rub it "fine" into the flour, wet the flour into dough with cold water, making it as near as possible the same consistency as the butter (so that the two will roll out evenly together); now place the dough on the pastry board, dust it under and over with flour, and roll it out in a piece say twelve inches long and six wide; now flour butter well, and roll that out in a sheet about eight inches long and five wide, (this will cover about three-fourths of the dough, leaving onefourth of the dough, and about half an inch around the sides and top edge, without butter). Place the sheet of butter on the dough as described; take half a tea-spoon cream tartar, mix it with twice its bulk of flour, and sprinkle it evenly over the butter; now fold the one-fourth not covered with butter, over on the butter, then fold the other part with the butter on it over on that, and you will then have three layers of dough and two of butter. Roll out to its original size, dust with flour, fold it as before, roll out again, dust with flour, and fold again; repeat twice more, giving it four rollings and foldings; when rolled out for the last time, cut it through in two even pieces, and place one on the other, and the paste is ready to roll in any shape desired.
In warm weather it is necessary to place it in a cool place after every second rolling; in very warm weather after each rolling, and sometimes on ice. A good, firm, tough butter is best for the purpose. Take care not to use carbonate of soda or saleratus instead of cream tartar; use a sharp cutter to cut out tartlets; give a rapid downward cut so that it will cut, not drag through, so that the layers may not be pressed together, so as to prevent their opening readily when baking, thus preventing the tartlets from raising fully. After they are cut, place them on the pans or in the patty-pans upside down, because the cutter in dividing the paste presses downward toward the board, closing the layers, and if placed in oven right side up, the edges pressed somewhat closely together can not open fully, consequently do not rise well, but, if inverted, the layers open more evenly at the edges.-C. H. King, Orange, N. J.
A classic laminated puff paste, built on a single sheet of butter folded into a lean dough and given four turns. The instructions are unusually precise for the period, and most of the advice still holds; only the ingredients and the missing oven temperature need updating.
- Temperature is the hingeButter and dough must be the same firmness so they roll as one sheet; if the butter is harder it shatters into lumps, if softer it squeezes out at the edges. The rests "in a cool place" mean 20-30 minutes in the refrigerator between turns, and in a warm kitchen after every single turn.
- Skip the butter washingWorking salted butter in cold water to draw out the salt was needed because butter was commonly salted for keeping. Buy unsalted butter, weigh out 12 oz for the sheet and 2 oz for the flour, and add about 1 teaspoon of fine salt to the dough itself.
- The cream of tartarHalf a teaspoon sprinkled over the butter is a period habit, thought to help the layers lift. Real puff rises on steam alone and the paste works perfectly well without it; the warning against using soda or saleratus in its place is sound, as either would brown and taste soapy in an unleavened dough.
- QuantitiesOne pound of flour is about 3 1/2 cups; the water is unmeasured, and roughly 1 cup of ice water will bring it to a firm, non-sticky dough. Total yield is a little over 2 lb of paste, enough for two 9-inch tart shells or about two dozen small tartlets.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given because none could be. Puff paste needs a hot oven, 425F, so the water in the butter flashes to steam before the fat melts and runs; a slack oven gives greasy, flat pastry.
- Number of turnsFour rollings and foldings, plus the final cut-and-stack, gives fewer layers than the six turns common in modern books, but plenty of lift. Rest the finished paste, wrapped, for at least half an hour before shaping so the gluten relaxes and the shells do not shrink.
- CuttingThe advice about a sharp cutter and a single downward stroke is exactly right and is still taught. Do not twist the cutter, and inverting the cut rounds before baking, as directed here, genuinely does give a more even rise.
- Pastry boardA cold work surface helps more than anything else in this recipe. Marble is ideal; a chilled sheet pan turned upside down will do.
Puff paste reached American household books through the French and English professional tradition, where it was the mark of a trained pastry cook rather than a home baker, and Buckeye Cookery (1877) handles it accordingly, printing a long, exacting method credited to a named contributor rather than a rule of thumb. The care taken over washing the salt from butter is a reminder that butter was commonly sold salted for storage and varied in water content and firmness, which is why the recipe insists on "good, firm, tough butter" and on matching the dough to it. The instruction to work on ice in hot weather points to the same period reality: ice was a purchased commodity, and summer pastry was genuinely difficult in a kitchen with a wood range going. Cream of tartar sprinkled between the layers appears in some nineteenth-century American receipts, and the explicit warning not to substitute soda may suggest the contributor had seen it done.