Alrighty. Part 2 of the story… pretty fascinating.

One fact, you know the French and the Brit always fight right? They are like dogs and cats, fire and water, mentos and coke, Mike Tyson and Holyfield’s ears, etc..

Draw as much similarities as you want, but they are not fond of each other.

Mike said to the ear: " You are going down!"

So.. come to the he said she said kinda thing between the 2 people….

The Brit has founded quite a vast recipe books at the 16th century ( Will-Shakes time), and books are priceless. Upon hearing the French claims about Claude Lorrain and his puff pastry achievement, the Brit cranked up their canon and fight back with their own version of puff pastry: ” puff paste”.

The Brit claimed that they derived puff paste from short paste ( aka shorte paest) ( man I’m feeling wierd writing those Renaissance word). Below is the Renaissance recipe for some Renaissance fair

To make shorte paest for tart

PERIOD: England, 1545 | SOURCE: A Propre new booke of Cokery | CLASS: Authentic

DESCRIPTION: A recipe for making pastry dough for tarts

 

Take fine floure and a curtesy of faire water and a disshe of swete butter and a litle saffron and the yolkes of two egges and make it thin and tender as ye maie.

 

Take fine flour and a “curtesy” of fair water and a dish of sweet butter and a little saffron and the yolks of two eggs and make it thin and tender as you may.

 

• Flour
• Water
• Butter
• Saffron
• Egg yolks, slightly beaten

Combine the flour & saffron. With a pastry knife, combine the flour and butter until the mixture resembles coarse sand.

Add the egg yolks and enough of the water to allow the pastry to come together into a ball of dough.

Knead in a little extra flour if necessary, but do not overknead.

Roll out into thin sheets of pastry and use as needed

Good o’ English from Shakespeare time right? yah well anyways they take this short paste to a whole other level, and this time, they created “the butter paste” .  Would this goes well with the tea party?

Well, I don’t know. You can be the judge for it next time you want to participate in the Renaissance tea party. But here is how they make it:

• Take flour and seven or eight eggs, and cold butter and fair water, or rose water, and spices (if you will) and make your paste.
• Beat it on a board, and when you have so done divide it into two or three parts and drive out the piece with a rolling pin.
• And do['t] with butter one piece by another, and fold up your paste upon the butter and drive it out again.
• And so do five or six times together, and some not cut for bearings.
• Put them into the over, and when they be baked scrape sugar on them and serve them.

Looks pretty right like our modern puff pastry right? The Brits feel really confident about beating the French against this small he said she said war, so they deliver the final punch. Derived straight from the book :  The English Hous-wife from Gervase Markham (publish 1653 for th 5th edition). 

• Now for the making of puff paste of the best kind, you shall take the finest wheat flour after it hath been a little baked in a pot in the oven
• Blend it well with eggs, whites and yolks all together
• After the paste is well kneaded, roll out a part thereof as thin as you please, and then spread cold sweet butter over the same, then upon the same butter roll another leaf of the paste as before; and spread it with butter also
• Thus roll leaf upon leaf with butter between till it be as thick as you think good: and with it either cover any baked meat, or make paste for venison, Florentine, tart of what dish else you please and so bake it.
• There be some that to this paste use sugar, but it is certain it will hinder the rising thereof 
• Therefore when your puffed paste is baked, you shall dissolved sugar into rose-water, and drop it into the paste as much as it will by any means receive, and then set it a little while in the oven after and it will be sweet enough.

Bingo!!! ( and wierd English btw) I dont know about you but the French story are more fun and more adaptive than the English ” Its in the book” version. Who do you think won this war?

I have one vote for the French.

Uhm… What did the French say again?

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