English Puff-Paste

Instructions

1. Break lightly into a couple of pounds of dried and sifted flour eight ounces of butter.
2. Add a pinch of salt, and sufficient cold water to make the paste.
3. Work it as quickly and as lightly as possible, until it is smooth and pliable.
4. Level it with the paste-roller until it is three-quarters of an inch thick, and place regularly upon it six ounces of butter in small bits.
5. Fold the paste like a blanket pudding, roll it out again, and lay on it six ounces more of butter.
6. Repeat the rolling, dusting each time a little flour over the board and paste, add again six ounces of butter, and roll the paste out thin three or four times, folding the ends into the middle.
7. Proportions: Flour, 2 lbs.; little salt; butter, 1 lb. 10 oz.
8. Note: if very rich paste be required, equal portions of flour and butter must be used; and the latter may be divided into two, instead of three parts, when it is to be rolled in.