PUFF PASTE

1/2 lb plus 2 oz flour
1/2 lb fresh butter
Glass of cold water (will only use small amount, see description)

Weigh half a pound and two ounces of flour, and sift it through a hair sieve into a large deep dish. Take out about one fourth of the flour, and lay it aside on one corner of your paste-board, to roll and sprinkle with.

Wash, in cold water, half a pound of the best fresh butter. Squeeze it hard with your hands, and make it up into a round lump. Divide it in four equal parts; lay them on one side of your paste-board, and have ready a glass of cold water.

Cut one of the four pieces of butter into the pan of flour. Cut it as small as possible. Wet it, gradually, with a very little water (too much water will make it tough) and mix well with the point of a large case-knife. Do not touch it with your hands. When the dough gets into a lump, sprinkle on the middle of the board some of the flour that you laid aside, and lay the dough upon it, turning it out of the pan with the knife.

Rub the rolling-pin with flour, and sprinkle a little on the lump of paste. Roll it out thin quickly and evenly, pressing on the rolling-pin very lightly. Then take the second of the four pieces of butter, and, with the point of your knife, stick it in little bits at equal distances all over the sheet of paste. Sprinkle on some flour, and fold up the dough.

Flour the paste-board and rolling-pin again; throw a little flour on the paste and roll it out a second time. Stick the third piece of butter all over it in little bits. Throw on some more flour, fold up the paste, sprinkle a little more flour on the dough, and on the rolling-pin, and roll it out a third time, always pressing on it lightly. Stick it over with the fourth and last piece of butter. Throw on a little more flour, fold up the paste and then roll it out in a large round sheet. Cut off the sides, so as to make the sheet of a square form, and lay the slips of dough upon the square sheet. Fold it up with the small pieces or trimmings, in the inside. Score or notch it a little with the knife, lay it on a plate and set it away in a cool place, but not where it can freeze, as that will make it heavy.

Having made the paste, prepare and mix your pudding or pie. When the mixture is finished, bring out your paste, flour the board and rolling-pin, and roll it out with a short quick stroke, and pressing the rolling-pin rather harder than while you were putting the butter in. If the paste rises in blisters, it will be light, unless spoiled in baking.

Then cut the sheet in half, fold up each piece and roll them out once more, separately, in round sheets the size of your plate. Press on rather harder, but not too hard. Roll the sheets thinnest in the middle and thickest at the edges. If intended for puddings, lay them in buttered soup-plates, and trim them evenly round the edges. If the edges do not appear thick enough, you may take the trimmings, put them all together, roll them out, and having cut them in slips the breadth of the rim of the plate, lay them all round to make the paste thicker at the edges, joining them nicely and evenly, as every patch or crack will appear distinctly when baked.

Notch the rim handsomely with a very sharp knife. Fill the dish with the mixture of the pudding, and bake it in a moderate oven. The paste should be of a light brown color. If the oven is too slow, it will be soft and clammy; if too quck, it will not have time to rise as high as it ought to do.

In making the best puff-paste, try to avoid using more flour to sprinkle and roll with, than the small portion which you have laid aside for that purpose at the beginning. If you make the dough too soft at first, by using too much water, it will be sticky, and require more flour, and will eventually be tough when baked. Do not put your hands to it, as their warmth will injure it. Use the knife instead. Always roll from you rather than to you, and press lightly on the rolling-pin, except at the last.

It is difficult to make puff-paste in the summer, unless in a cellar, or very cool room, and on a marble table. The butter should, if possible, be washed the night before, and kept covered with ice till you use it next day. The water should have ice in it, and the butter should be iced as it sets on the paste-board. After the paste is mixed, it should be put in a covered dish, and set in cold water till you are ready to give it the last rolling. With all these precautions to prevent its being heavy, it will not rise as well, or be in any respect as good as in cold weather.

From Seventy-Five Receipts for Pastry, Cakes and Sweetmeats by “A Lady of Philadelphia” (Eliza Leslie), 1828

Comment: As the frequent pie-bakers of our readership have already noticed, the term “puff paste” as used in this recipe is not at all the same thing as “puff pastry” as it is sold today. It’s about as good as piecrust can possibly get, but it’s still pie crust. “Paste” was simply the term used for a flour and water, flour and butter, flour and lard, flour and meat drippings, or generally any flour-and-fat combination which was used to enclose another ingredient. (”Pudding” is another word that has undergone definition drift over the centuries, but we will discuss that elsewhere.)

In 1828 there was no central heating in houses, no air conditioning, no mechanical refrigeration. Ovens did not come with thermostats, and heat was provided by burning wood, not gas or propane and certainly not by heated electrical elements. Cooling, of persons or foods, was provided in two ways: by keeping things underground in a cellar or, if one was lucky enough to have a spring on the property, in a springhouse.

Miss Leslie however lived in Philadelphia, and her intended audience was also made of city-dwellers. Piped running water was assumed to be available, as was delivered ice in summertime. The in-home icebox was a revolutionary a development in cooking as can be imagined. So butter, although still churned by hand and sold in “lumps” at the market, and requiring rinsing to remove the salt in which it was preserved and squeezing to remove the buttermilk likely to be lurking inside it,  could at least be kept chilled.

The difference between “puff paste” and “plain paste” was primarily the use of butter as the sole fat, and the number of times it was rolled, dotted with butter, folded and re-rolled. This, quite simply, is what makes a flaky crust. The foldings provide layers, and the butter keeps the layers apart to bake separately. Yes it is somewhat tedious, and indeed will take more than a few times to master the process, but once you’ve had pie made with this crust nothing else will ever come close to matching it.