ANOTHER VERY SUPERIOR PUFF PASTE.
One pound and a quarter of flour, and one of butter. The butter should be divided into four parts, and the salt well washed out of it in three different waters, the night before, and set in a cold place to become hard, the harder the better. Weigh a pound and a quarter of flour; sift half a pound of the flour into a tin pan, (such a pan as should be always kept for making pastry,) keep the rest of the flour in the sieve. Cut up in the pan with the half pound of flour, a quarter of a pound of butter with two knives. (The hands should never touch the pastry.) Then pour slowly into the pan half a pint of ice water; mixing it with the knives. Sift some of the flour on your board, and roll it out very thin, with a floured rolling pin; sufficient flour must be used to prevent it sticking to the board; put over the paste in small pieces as regularly as possible, one quarter of butter; then sift flour over and cut it in strips about three inches wide; then cut across as many times, placing one piece upon another till it makes quite a high mound. Flour it and roll it out again as thin as possible. Then put on in very small pieces the third quarter of butter, and proceed as above, with the last quarter; roll out very thin, cutting it as before. The flour is now all rolled in except half of a pound, reserved for rolling out the paste when making up. It should be made in a cold place, and near an open window. When you make up your pies cut a piece from top to bottom of the pile, and roll out thin. The fire should be under pastry to make it puff up. There is nothing better for baking pastry than a ten plate stove.