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Puff Paste
IF you have a marble slab to work on when making puff paste, your work will be easier. A rolling-pin with movable handles makes the touch lighter. There can be no heavyhanded methods, or you will have a solid, indigestible substance. Scald an earthen bowl, fill with ice water; wash your hands in hot water, then in cold. Work 1 pound butter in a bowl cold water until it is waxy and nearly all the salt is washed out of it. Take out the butter, pat and squeeze till the water flies. Measure from it 2 level tablespoonfuls, mold the rest into an oblong cake, then set it where it will grow hard and cold. Sift 1 pound flour with teaspoonful salt into the bowl. Rub between the fingers and thumb the 2 tablespoonfuls butter. Mix with ice water, stirring constantly till you have a soft dough.
Turn out on a marble slab, which has been dusted with flour. Knead with an even, light touch, till it feels elastic; then cover with a napkin, and set away to " ripen" five minutes.
When the dough is ripened, you may begin work on it. Put the paste on the slab and, with the lightest possible pats from the rolling-pin, shape it about half as wide as it is long, keeping the corners square. At one end lay the hardened piece of butter.
Over this fold the rest of the dough.
Tuck lightly around the edges, inclosing all the air possible. With light taps from the rolling-pin break up the butter, spreading it and rolling the paste into a longer strip. Be careful to keep the sides and ends of the paste even, and to break as few air bubbles as possible. When the strip is almost as long as the slab, fold it like the letter Z, and begin again rolling, folding, and turning until the process has been repeated six times. If the paste shows the least symptom of being soft, or the butter of breaking through, set it away to chill before you finish the process.
Roll always in one direction, from you, with a long, sweeping motion.
By cutting the paste across after the work is completed, you may see the texture which gives you a crust eight times as high after baking as before it was set in an oven. You will notice layer after layer of a waferlike thickness of butter and paste with tiny bubbles between. Wrap it in parchment paper and set away in a covered dish overnight. It will be all the more tender and flaky for twenty-four hours of "ripening." During the winter a batch of puff paste, wrapped and covered, may be kept for several weeks in a very cold place. Use it as desired, baking patés, vol au vents, or tarts as required. These will keep five or six days after making, being reheated before they are filled.
The oven for baking puff paste should be as hot as for rolls, with the greatest heat underneath, so the pate can rise to its full height before browning. As heat touches the pastry the bubbles expand, lifting the thin layers higher and higher. When it has reached its height, and is baked delicately brown, you have what is properly called puff paste.
NOTES ABOUT PUFF PASTE When using a cutter, always dip in flour between each cutting; it will insure neat edges.
MRS. CURTIS'S COOKBOOK If the work has to be done in a warm room, chill the paste between three pans, the upper one filled with broken ice, the second one set into another large pan, also filled with ice.
Puff paste is always in good condition if it slips easily on the slab. Should you wish to use is for a pie, bake it vol-au-vent fashion over the bottom of a pie-plate first, and fill after baking, or use ordinary pie paste for the bottom when the filling is to be baked.
Build up the sides with puff paste; rich pastry never makes a good undercrust-it soaks.
When baking small pieces such as paté tops or cheese straws, do not put them in a pan with the larger pieces; they bake in less than half the time required by the others.
If you wish pastry to have a glazed appearance, brush over with beaten egg before putting it in the oven.
Utilize trimmings for smaller things; never add them to the larger pieces of paste.
Use the sharpest knife for cutting pastry; if it is dragged ever so slightly in the cutting it will not rise well. Also, in making two layers of pastry adhere, never press it together or you will have a heavy spot.
Always have puff paste ice cold when it is put in the oven. Let the heat be greatest at the bottom when the paste is put in; it must rise before it begins to brown. PUFF-PASTE DAINTIES Vol au Vent. trimmings stars, hearts, crescents, or any forms you can produce with a paste jagger. Brush the paste on the saucer lightly with cold water, and stick on the ornaments in any style desired. Chill the vol au vent and lid for half an hour, then bake in an oven which is very hot at first, but cooled slightly when the pastry has risen and is beginning to brown.
Watch the baking with great care, as the paste will burn or become unshapely if not turned occasionally. A vol au vent may be filled with any cream mixture or with a cooked, chilled fruit and rich sirup.