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Quick Puff Paste
1 cup bread flour 1 tablespoon lard Cold water ⅞ cup butter Work lard into flour, first using knife then tips of fingers. Moisten to a dough with cold water, pat, and roll out same as Puff Paste. Dot paste with small pieces of butter, using one-third the quantity. Dredge with flour, fold from ends toward centre, then double, making four layers. Pat, and roll out. Repeat until butter is used. Roll, shape, chill, and bake in a hot oven.
A rough puff paste built on the standard three-turn method, compressed into a single page. Everything depends on keeping the butter cold and distinct from the dough.
- The hinge: temperatureButter dotted onto warm dough smears into the flour and you get shortcrust rather than layers. Work quickly, and if the paste starts to feel soft or greasy at any point, refrigerate it for 20 minutes before the next roll.
- Bread flour is meant literallyFarmer's book distinguishes bread flour from pastry flour, and the stronger flour gives more gluten structure to hold the steam and lift the layers. All-purpose will work; cake or pastry flour is weaker and will give less lift.
- The water is unmeasuredThe original gives no quantity because it depends on the flour. Expect roughly 3 to 4 tablespoons of ice water for 1 cup of flour, added a spoonful at a time until the dough just coheres.
- Butter measureHalf a cup is 4 oz, one standard American stick, 115 g, or 8 tablespoons. Divided in three, that is about 2½ tablespoons dotted on at each of three turns. Use unsalted and add a scant ¼ teaspoon salt to the flour, which the recipe omits.
- "Fold from ends toward centre, then double"This is the book fold, sometimes called the double turn: bring both short ends in to meet at the middle, then close it like a book, giving four layers. Rotate 90 degrees before each fresh rolling so the layers build evenly.
- Hot oven425 to 450F. Puff paste needs the initial blast to convert the water in the butter to steam before the fat melts out; a moderate oven produces a flat, greasy pastry.
- Chill before baking, not just duringThirty minutes in the refrigerator relaxes the gluten so the pastry does not shrink away from the tin, and re-firms the butter.
- YieldEnough for one 9-inch single crust or about a dozen small patty shells or tart cases. Well wrapped, it keeps a few days refrigerated and can be frozen.
Classic puff paste in the French manner uses equal weights of butter and flour and a single sealed block of butter folded through a number of turns, a job traditionally said to require cool conditions and a good deal of time. This is the shortcut version: less butter, worked in by dots rather than a laminated block, with lard cut into the base dough to give tenderness cheaply. Lard was the ordinary household shortening of the period and considerably less expensive than butter. The technique is what modern bakers call rough puff or blitz puff paste, and it survives largely unchanged because it delivers most of the lift for a fraction of the labour.