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Rich Pie Crust
(For making Pastry Shells and French Tarts) 13/4 1¾ cups bread flour 1/4 cup Argo or Kingsford's Cornstarch 1 teaspoon salt 2/3 cup Mazola Cold water to moisten Sift the dry ingredients together and stir in the Mazola. The mixture will be very crumbly. Add just enough water to hold it together. Turn onto a floured board, roll at once and use.
An oil pastry from a corn-products promotional booklet, built on cornstarch rather than butter or lard. It behaves differently from a shortening crust and rewards a light hand.
- The flour quantityRead it as 1 3/4 cups bread flour; the figure is duplicated in the original. With the 1/4 cup cornstarch that gives 2 cups of dry measure, roughly 250 g.
- Mazola and ArgoMazola is corn oil and Argo or Kingsford's cornstarch is plain cornstarch; Mazola and Argo are still sold, and any neutral oil and any cornstarch will do. The cornstarch is there to dilute the gluten and keep an oil crust from turning leathery.
- Bread flour is deliberateBread flour -- In this period 'bread flour' meant the ordinary hard-wheat household flour, as distinct from pastry flour, so the choice may be routine rather than pointed. All-purpose works but gives a more fragile shell that is harder to lift.
- Roll at onceThis is the hinge, and the recipe says it outright. Oil pastry has no cold fat to keep firm, so there is nothing to be gained by chilling. Mix, gather, roll, and get it into the tin.
- Water, sparinglyTwo to four tablespoons is usually enough. The dough should just cohere when pressed; anything wetter turns tough, and the crumbly stage is normal rather than a sign of failure.
- Rolling between paperOil doughs tear and do not patch neatly. Rolling between two sheets of parchment or waxed paper, then peeling off the top sheet and inverting into the tin, saves the shell.
- Baking blindThe original gives no oven instruction. For empty pastry shells and tart cases, line with paper and weights and bake at about 425F for 12 minutes, then remove the weights and give it another 5 to 8 minutes until pale gold. The dough carries no sugar, so it browns slowly.
- YieldTwo cups of dry mix is generous; expect roughly two 9-inch shells, or one shell with enough left for several small tart cases.
Recipes of this kind came out of the corn-milling companies' own kitchens, when Argo cornstarch and Mazola corn oil were both marketed by the same concern and booklets like this one existed to show cooks what to do with them. Corn oil was a comparative novelty in home baking, and an oil-based pastry had to be argued for against generations of lard and butter crusts; the cornstarch quietly does the tenderising work that solid fat would otherwise do. Such promotional cookbooks were given away free or sold for a few cents, and they are a fair record of what the food industry was trying to persuade households to buy at the time, when pastry shells were as likely to hold creamed chicken or fish as fruit.