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Puff Paste (Take three-fourths pound)
Take three-fourths pound of butter (be sure that it is of the best quality), free it from salt (by working it in water), form it in a square lump, and place it in flour for half an hour to harden; place one pound of flour in a bowl, take two ounces of butter and rub it "fine" into the flour, wet the flour into dough with cold water, making it as near as possible the same consistency as the butter (so that the two will roll out evenly together); now place the dough on the pastry board, dust it under and over with flour, and roll it out in a piece say twelve inches long and six wide; now flour butter well, and roll that out in a sheet about eight inches long and five wide, (this will cover about three-fourths of the dough, leaving onefourth of the dough, and about half an inch around the sides and top edge, without butter). Place the sheet of butter on the dough as described; take half a tea-spoon cream tartar, mix it with twice its bulk of flour, and sprinkle it evenly over the butter; now fold the one-fourth not covered with butter, over on the butter, then fold the other part with the butter on it over on that, and you will then have three layers of dough and two of butter. Roll out to its original size, dust with flour, fold it as before, roll out again, dust with flour, and fold again; repeat twice more, giving it four rollings and foldings; when rolled out for the last time, cut it through in two even pieces, and place one on the other, and the paste is ready to roll in any shape desired.
In warm weather it is necessary to place it in a cool place after every second rolling; in very warm weather after each rolling, and sometimes on ice. A good, firm, tough butter is best for the purpose. Take care not to use carbonate of soda or saleratus instead of cream tartar; use a sharp cutter to cut out tartlets; give a rapid downward cut so that it will cut, not drag through, so that the layers may not be pressed together, so as to prevent their opening readily when baking, thus preventing the tartlets from raising fully. After they are cut, place them on the pans or in the patty-pans upside down, because the cutter in dividing the paste presses downward toward the board, closing the layers, and if placed in oven right side up, the edges pressed somewhat closely together can not open fully, consequently do not rise well, but, if inverted, the layers open more evenly at the edges.-C. H. King, Orange, N. J.
A full laminated puff paste, worked by hand with a butter block, in the classic proportion of butter almost equal to flour. Nothing here is unsafe; the difficulties are temperature and touch.
- The hinge: matched consistencyThe instruction to make the dough "as near as possible the same consistency as the butter" is the whole recipe. If the butter is harder than the dough it will shatter into flakes and pierce the layers; if softer, it will smear and the paste will bake dense instead of rising. Pound the cold butter block with a rolling pin until it is pliable but still cool, and mix the water dough to the same yielding firmness.
- Weights in modern termsOne pound of flour is about 3 1/2 to 3 3/4 cups, and three-quarters pound of butter is three sticks. Weigh both if you can; the ratio is what makes this puff paste rather than a rough flaky pastry.
- Washing the butterWorking butter in cold water to remove salt was standard when butter was heavily salted for keeping and varied from churn to churn. Unsalted butter, preferably a European-style one at 82 percent fat or higher, does the same job with no washing. If you use salted butter, add no further salt to the dough.
- The cream of tartarHalf a teaspoon of cream of tartar sprinkled over the butter is not a leavener here — without an alkali it produces no gas. It acidifies the dough slightly, which slackens the gluten and was believed to help the layers separate. The warning against using soda or saleratus in its place is sound: alkali in a butter paste gives a soapy taste and a yellow-brown crumb.
- Chilling and restingThe advice to cool the paste after every second rolling, or every rolling in hot weather, still holds; 20 to 30 minutes in the refrigerator is enough. Rest it once more, well wrapped, after the final fold and before cutting, or the gluten will pull the shapes out of true in the oven.
- Cutting and invertingThe sharp downward cut and the upside-down placement are practical and worth following. A dull cutter or a twisting motion seals the edges and the piece rises lopsided. Brush any egg wash on the top only, keeping it off the cut sides for the same reason.
- Oven heat, which the recipe omitsPuff paste wants a hot oven: 425 to 450F for the first 10 to 15 minutes to turn the water in the butter to steam and lift the layers, then reduced to about 375F to dry the interior. A moderate oven from the start will melt the butter out before the structure sets.
- YieldOne pound of flour with three-quarters pound of butter (plus the two ounces rubbed in) and the water makes something over two pounds of finished paste — enough for roughly two dozen small tartlet shells, or several dozen bouchées or palmiers. It freezes well after the final fold.
Puff paste of this kind — a butter block enclosed in a water dough and given repeated turns — was the pastry cook's proof of skill throughout the nineteenth century, and its technique is generally traced to French professional kitchens, where it is pâte feuilletée. The signed attribution to C. H. King of Orange, New Jersey, is worth noting: compiled cookbooks of the period gathered contributions from named correspondents well outside the South, and the detail here reads more like a working baker's than a housewife's — the discussion of cutter technique, of inverting the tartlets, of setting the paste on ice in very warm weather. Before mechanical refrigeration was common in domestic kitchens, laminated pastry was largely a cool-weather project.