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Puff Paste: Bake
Patés. a Roll out the paste half an inch thick; shape two rounds with a paté cutter. From one round cut a smaller piece. Use the ring left to lay on the other round, brushing with water to make it stick. Bake and fill with a creamed mixture, using the small round as a lid.
Cream Horns.
Cream horns are made on fine-pointed tubes which are called ladylock irons.
Cut the paste into ribbons with a knife or jagger and begin to wind at the small end, the edges scarcely touching. Bake delicately brown.
They may be filled with cream and chicken or oysters and served as an entrée, or with whipped cream as a dessert.
Cheese Straws.
Season some grated cheese with paprika and salt, then dust it over a Lay a mold upon a round of puff piece of puff paste. Fold the paste paste, rolled about half an inch thick, and cut out a circle as big as you think will be required to cover it.
Set the mold upside down and tuck down the paste, handling carefully.
Do not cover scantily anywhere or it will crack. Prick all over with a fork and set away in a cold place to chill thoroughly. Find a plate or saucer which fits the top of the mold and cover with puff paste. Cut from the and roll two or three times. Cut out in rings with a doughnut cutter or in straws with a jagger. The straws may be braided or baked singly.
Flaky Pie Crust. 3 cupfuls flour, cupful butter, cupful ice water, cupful lard.
PUFF PASTE Sift the flour into a chopping bowl, add the butter and lard, and chop with a knife until no piece of the shortening larger than a pecan can be seen. Sprinkle the water here and there through the flour, and mix with a fork into a soft dough. Drop on a floured board, dust lightly with flour, press down with the rolling-pin, and roll back and forth until the paste becomes an oblong sheet not more than half an inch in thickness. Slip a broad-bladed knife under each end of this sheet, and fold over toward the center, thus forming three layers of the paste. Lift, with the knife, from the board, dust with fresh flour; lay the paste down again, dust with flour, roll, and again fold over as before. Repeat the operation, and the paste is ready to use. When ice water is added to the flour and shortening, the shortening becomes distributed through the flour in small balls and is not packed together in a mass, and when the dough is drawn together and lightly pressed with the rolling-pin these balls flatten into flakes, which, by repeated foldings, are piled one upon another, and by gently rolling become thinner and delicate. Three rollings and foldings are as much as these flakes will bear. Rolling and folding a great number of times causes them to become broken and packed, so that the paste will not rise and puff up, as it should, in baking. It is well to let the paste lie on ice, or in a cold place, for an hour before rolling it out for pies, as its quality is improved by so doing; and if the weather is warm it may advantageously be placed on ice ten minutes between each rolling out. If a teaspoonful baking powder be sifted with the flour, less shortening can be used, but the pastry will not be as crisp and delicate.-EMMA P. EWING. more Apple Pie.
A cluster of puff-paste shapes followed by Emma Ewing's rubbed-and-folded pie crust. The shapes assume you already have puff paste made; the crust at the end is a separate, quicker dough.
- The crust quantities are incompleteThe ingredient line reads "3 cupfuls flour, cupful butter, cupful ice water, cupful lard" — the fractions have dropped out and cannot be recovered from the text. A cup each of butter and lard against three cups of flour would be far too rich, and a full cup of water far too wet; treat the amounts as unknown rather than guessing.
- Oven heatThe book gives no temperature. Puff paste and its offshoots want a hot oven — modern equivalents are usually given as 425-450F — so the trapped water flashes to steam before the butter melts out. Cheese straws are thin and colour fast; check them early.
- Patés means vol-au-ventPatés means a pastry case -- Here a paté is a pastry case, not a meat paste. The ring laid on the base rises into a wall; the small disc cut from the centre becomes the lid. The recipe calls for water at the join; egg wash on cut edges is generally avoided because it can hinder the lift.
- Ladylock ironsThese are the tapered metal cream-horn moulds, also sold as cornet or horn forms. The recipe says to wind the pastry ribbon with the edges scarcely touching, seam side down on the sheet; let the horns cool on the mould before sliding them off.
- A jaggerA jagger is a fluted pastry wheel. A plain knife or pizza wheel does the same work; the fluting is decorative.
- The mould methodThe section describing a mould set upside down, covered with paste, pricked and chilled is the old way of shaping a large raised case: the pastry bakes over the inverted form. Chilling until firm is what stops it slumping, and the warning not to cover thinly at any point is the hinge — thin spots crack as steam builds.
- Cheese for strawsUse a dry hard cheese, aged Cheddar or Parmesan, grated fine. Fresh or moist cheese weeps fat and makes the layers slick instead of crisp.
- Chilling between rollsEwing's advice to rest the paste an hour cold, and ten minutes on ice between rollings in warm weather, still holds. Her limit of three rollings and foldings applies to this chopped-in crust, not to true puff paste, which is usually given about six turns.
- Filled horns and casesAnything filled with creamed chicken or oysters should be filled just before serving; the pastry goes soft within the half hour, and warm filling in a cool case is a poor holding condition for shellfish.
Puff paste was a show-piece of the late nineteenth-century cookery school: one dough that could be cut into vol-au-vent cases, wound onto horn moulds, or dusted with cheese and twisted into straws, so a single morning's work supplied both an entrée and a dessert. The pie crust that closes the section is credited to Emma P. Ewing, who taught cookery at Chautauqua and wrote for the domestic-science movement, and her explanation of why the shortening should stay in pecan-sized lumps — flattened into flakes that stack with each fold — is a plain statement of laminating theory. The tools named are of their period: a jagger for fluting, a doughnut cutter for rings, and ladylock irons, the tapered tubes used for cream horns.