Puff Paste
1 pound butter 1 pound pastry flour or 14 ozs. bread flour Cold water Wash the butter, pat and fold until no water flies. Reserve two tablespoons of butter, and shape remainder into a circular piece one-half inch thick, and put on floured board. Work two tablespoons of butter into flour with the tips of fingers of the right hand. Moisten to a dough with cold water, turn on slightly floured board, and knead five minutes. Cover with towel, and let stand five minutes.
Pat and roll one-fourth inch thick, keeping paste a little wider than long, and corners square. If this cannot be accomplished with rolling-pin, draw into shape with fingers. Place butter on centre of lower half of paste. Cover butter by folding upper half of paste over it. Press edges firmly, to enclose as much air as possible.
Fold right side of paste over enclosed butter, the left side under enclosed butter. Turn paste half-way round, cover, and let stand five minutes. Pat, and roll one-fourth inch thick, having paste longer than wide, lifting often to prevent paste from sticking, and dredging board slightly with flour when necessary. Fold from ends towards centre, making three layers. Cover, and let stand five minutes. Repeat twice, turning paste half-way round each time before rolling. After fourth rolling, fold from ends to centre, and double, making four layers. Put in cold place to chill; if outside temperature is not sufficiently cold, fold paste in a towel, put in a dripping-pan, and place between dripping pans of crushed ice. If paste is to be kept for several days, wrap in a napkin, put in tin pail and cover tightly, then put in cold place; if in ice box, do not allow pail to come in direct contact with ice.
This is a full-butter puff paste in the classic proportion — equal weights butter and flour — built by the French method of enclosing a butter block in a dough envelope. The instructions are sound; what has changed is the flour, the refrigeration, and the fact that most kitchens no longer buy unwashed butter.
- Washing the butterNineteenth-century butter was often salty and wet, so cooks kneaded it under cold water to rinse the salt and press out buttermilk. With modern unsalted butter you can skip the washing; simply pound the cold block between sheets of parchment into a square about half an inch thick and keep it cool.
- Flour choice"Pastry flour" here is a soft, low-protein flour (about 8-9% protein). The recipe's alternative uses less of a stronger flour, 14 ounces of bread flour to a pound of pastry flour, presumably to compensate for the extra strength and absorption; modern all-purpose is a reasonable substitute. A full pound of bread flour would give a tougher, more elastic paste that fights the roller.
- Water quantityNo amount is given because it depends on the flour. Expect roughly 3/4 to 1 cup of ice water for a pound of flour; add it gradually to a dough that is supple but not sticky, since a dough firmer than the butter will tear the layers.
- The hinge: matched consistencyThe single thing that decides whether this works is that butter and dough be the same firmness when you roll. If the butter is harder it shatters into shards; if softer it smears and the layers merge. Before the first turn, bring both to the same cool, still-pliable state rather than to any fixed temperature.
- Resting timesThe repeated five-minute rests assume a cold larder. In a warm modern kitchen give the paste 20–30 minutes in the refrigerator between turns instead, and longer if the butter starts to show through.
- Turns and layersThree letter folds plus the initial enclosing fold and the final book fold give several hundred butter layers -- a full classic puff. If the paste resists the pin or springs back, it is under-rested rather than under-worked.
- Chilling and storageThe dripping-pans of crushed ice and the covered tin pail are pre-refrigerator improvisations. Wrap the finished paste tightly in plastic and refrigerate up to three days, or freeze up to a month; the napkin-and-pail routine served to keep the paste from absorbing moisture and icebox odors, and to keep it off the ice itself.
- BakingThe recipe stops at the paste; baking directions belong to the recipes that use it. Puff paste needs a hot oven -- 425-450F -- so steam lifts the layers before the butter melts out; drop to 375F once it has risen to dry the interior. Cut with a sharp knife or cutter and do not press the edges, which seals the layers shut.
- YieldAbout 2 1/2 pounds of paste, enough for two double-crust tarts, roughly two dozen patty shells, or a large vol-au-vent.
Puff paste was the showpiece of the American pastry course, and the treatment here matches Fannie Farmer's Boston Cooking-School Cook Book (1896), which handles it as a technical exercise as much as a recipe — the cooking-school movement believed that precise, repeatable method could be taught the way arithmetic was. The layered paste itself is French in its codified form, pâte feuilletée, and the folding-in-thirds sequence described here is essentially the same as the one still taught. The instruction to wash the butter is the tell of the period: before creameries standardized butter, a pound bought at market varied in salt and residual moisture from week to week, and a cook who wanted a reliable result had to correct it by hand. The ice-pan and tin-pail arrangements at the end record the other constraint, that a household cold room was seasonal and an icebox was damp.