Puff Paste
1 lb. Gold Medal flour 1 teaspoon salt 1 lb. butter Ice water Keep everything clean and cold; wash the butter in cold water, reserve one-third pound. Divide the remaining two-thirds into four equal parts and pat each into a thin sheet. Set these sheets on ice.
Mix and sift the flour and salt, cut and rub the reserved butter into it and make as stiff as possible with ice water. Dust moulding board slightly with Gold Medal flour, turn the paste onto board and knead for one minute, place on ice and let stand for five minutes. Beat and roll the paste into an oblong sheet one-third inch thick; place one sheet of butter on the middle of the paste, fold the paste, letting the right third fold over and the left third fold under. The paste is now in a rectangular shape and with a little care in rolling can be kept so through all the subsequent foldings and rollings. Roll out to one-quarter inch thick and fold as before, but without butter. The third time of folding enclose the second piece of butter, and continue adding it at every alternate rolling until the butter has all been used; as there were four sheets of butter that will make eight times folding and rolling the paste. Finally give one or two extra turns. Lay on ice until needed for use. It is better to lie for several hours before being baked. If the paste sticks to the board or pin, lay on ice until chilled through, scrape the board clean, polish with a dry cloth and dust with fresh flour before trying again. Use as little flour in rolling as possible, but use enough to keep the paste dry. Roll with a light, even, long stroke in every direction, but never work the rolling pin back and forth, as that kneads the paste and toughens it, besides breaking the bubbles of air. The number of layers of butter and paste make it flaky, and every bubble of air that is folded in helps it to rise and puff in baking.
Chopped or Rough Paste 1 lb. Gold Medal flour 14 oz. butter 1 teaspoon salt 1 cup ice water Sift flour and salt, chop the butter into it with two knives. Add the water slowly, tossing the mass together until a little more than half the flour is moistened. Turn on moulding board. Form with a long knife into a square mould and press down with a cold rolling pin, rolling gently till the mass is three times as long as it is wide. With a broad bladed knife turn over the ends so as to fold it in thirds, roll out again, repeat, gathering all the loose crumbs between the folds at each turn. It will usually need four turns. This can be shaped and baked at once but is more flaky if allowed to chill on ice for an hour.
A full classic puff paste at equal weights of flour and butter, plus a quicker rough paste. Nothing here is obsolete, but several instructions assume an ice box and unstandardised butter.
- The hinge: keep the butter plastic, not meltingEverything depends on the butter staying cold enough to hold its layers but pliable enough to roll without shattering. If it cracks into shards the layers break and steam escapes; if it softens it merges with the dough and you get short crust instead of puff. Fifteen to twenty minutes in the refrigerator between turns, not the freezer.
- "Lay on ice" and "set on ice"The ice box, where paste and butter sheets might sit on a shelf beside the ice or directly against it; either way the aim is to chill thoroughly. Refrigerate. The five-minute rest after kneading is a minimum; the several hours before baking is the part worth honoring.
- Weights, not cupsA pound of flour is about 3½ to 4 cups depending on how it is scooped, which is why the recipe gives weight. Use a scale: 1 lb (454 g) flour, 1 lb butter (four sticks), of which 5⅓ oz is rubbed into the flour and the remaining 10⅔ oz divided into four sheets.
- Washing the butterNineteenth-century butter was often salted unevenly and could still carry buttermilk, which sours and weakens the layers. Kneading it under cold water washed both out. Modern unsalted butter needs no washing.
- Ice water quantityThe puff paste gives none; expect roughly ¾ to 1 cup for a pound of flour, added until the mass just coheres. "As stiff as possible" is accurate — a wet détrempe will absorb the butter.
- "Beat and roll"Whacking the chilled dough flat with the pin before rolling spreads it without stretching the gluten. It remains the fastest way to bring a rested block back to workable thickness.
- Oven temperatureThe book gives none, as it assumed a wood or coal range judged by hand. Puff paste needs a hot oven, 425-450F, so the water in the butter flashes to steam before the fat renders out. A moderate oven gives greasy, flat pastry.
- YieldA little over 2 lb of paste -- enough for two large tarts, or roughly two dozen small patty shells or vol-au-vents. It freezes well wrapped tightly, which the original could not suggest.
- Rough paste14 oz butter to 1 lb flour with only four turns is what we now call rough puff. Leaving "a little more than half the flour moistened" looks wrong but is deliberate: the dry crumbs get gathered into the folds and become the flakes.
Puff paste of this kind reached American kitchens through French pâtisserie and the English confectioners who copied it, and by the time the Gold Medal book appeared it was often said to show a cook's hands at their best — cool, quick, and light. The one-to-one ratio of flour to butter is the classic full paste; the "chopped or rough" version below it is the household compromise, and its presence in a flour-miller's promotional cookbook says a good deal about the audience: women who wanted the prestige dish and the practical one on the same page. Note that both recipes are built around ice, so that the instruction "set these sheets on ice" is part of the method itself. Milling companies published books like this to promote a specific brand of flour, and pastry was a favorite showcase, since a strong, consistent flour was exactly what a laminated dough needed and exactly what barrel-bought flour could not guarantee.