Home › Pastry › Puff Paste (One heaping pound superfine)
Puff Paste (One heaping pound superfine)
One heaping pound superfine sifted flour, one of butter, which has first been folded in a napkin and gently pressed to remove all moisture; place the flour on board (or marble slab is better), make a well in center, squeeze in juice of half a lemon, and add yolk of one egg, beaten with a little ice-water; stir with one hand and drop in ice-water with the other, until the paste is as hard as the butter; roll paste out in a smooth square an inch thick, smooth sides with a rolling-pin, spread the butter over half the paste; lay the other half over like an old-fashioned turn-over, leave it for fifteen minutes in a cold place, then roll out in a long strip, keeping the edges smooth, and double it in three parts, as follows: Fold one-third over on the middle third, roll it down, then fold over the other outside third, roll out in a long strip and repeat the folding process-rolling across this time so that the butter may not run "in streaks" by being always rolled the same way; let it lie for fifteen minutes, and repeat this six times, allowing fifteen minutes between each rolling to cool, otherwise the butter will "oil," and the paste is ready for use.
Handle as little as possible through the whole process. All the flour used must be of the very best quality, and thoroughly sifted. The quantity of water depends on the capacity of the flour to absorb it, which is quite variable. Too little makes the paste tough, and too much makes it thin, and prevents the flakiness so desirable. Rich paste requires a quick oven. This may be made in one-fourth the quantity given above, and is then much more easily handled.- Mrs. V. G. Hush, Minneapolis, Minn.
A full-butter puff paste at the classic one-to-one ratio, written before refrigeration made the job easy. Everything here depends on keeping the butter and dough at the same firmness.
- The hinge: match the butter to the doughThe recipe has you add ice-water "until the paste is as hard as the butter," and that matching is the whole technique. If the détrempe is softer than the butter block, the butter shatters into shards; if it is harder, the butter squeezes out at the edges. Both give you a tough, greasy pastry rather than distinct leaves.
- A heaping poundTake it as a pound of flour and a pound of butter, roughly 450 g each, "heaping" simply meaning a generous measure. That is about 2 lb of paste before the water, a large batch by any modern standard; the quarter batch the recipe suggests at the end is the sane place to start.
- Superfine sifted flourThis means finely milled, well-bolted flour, closer to modern pastry flour than to bread flour. All-purpose works; a strong bread flour will fight you and toughen the layers.
- Pressing the butter in a napkinNineteenth-century butter carried a good deal of buttermilk and water, and the cloth wrung it out. Modern unsalted butter is already low in moisture, though European-style butter at 82-84% fat is closer to what this recipe assumes and rolls more obediently.
- Lemon juice and egg yolkThe acid slightly relaxes the gluten so the dough stretches instead of springing back. The yolk enriches and colours. Neither is essential to a puff paste, but both were common in American receipts of the period.
- Water is deliberately unmeasuredThe book is right that flour absorbs variably. For a pound of flour, start near 1 cup of ice water including the yolk and stop when the dough is firm and cohesive rather than sticky.
- Six turns with restsSix three-fold turns is standard for full puff. The fifteen-minute rest in a "cold place" means a refrigerator now; 20-30 minutes at 40F is safer than fifteen in a warm kitchen. Turning the dough a quarter turn between rollings, as instructed, keeps the butter from streaking in one direction.
- A quick ovenConventionally read today as somewhere around 425-450F, though the book gives no figure. Puff paste needs the initial blast to flash the water in the butter and dough into steam before the layers set; too slack an oven simply melts the butter out and leaves a flat, oily crust.
Puff paste is generally traced to the French pâte feuilletée in English and American kitchens. The Dixie Cook Book, like its relatives in the Buckeye family of compiled cookbooks, gathered contributed recipes, which is why a Minneapolis cook appears in a Southern volume. The insistence on a marble slab, ice water, and fifteen minutes in a cold place between turns reflects a period when the only reliable cold was an icebox or a north-facing pantry, and when the difference between good and ruined pastry was often just the temperature of the room. The closing note that the recipe can be made at a quarter scale "and is then much more easily handled" is an admission in a genre that usually assumed a large family and a hired girl to help.