Puff-Paste.
1 pint flour.
½ lb. butter.
1 egg, well beaten. Use the yolk only.
1 gill ice-water.
Mix the flour, a tablespoonful of butter, the beaten egg and ice-water into a paste with a wooden spoon. Flour your pastry-board, and roll out the crust very thin. Put the rest of the butter, when you have washed it, in the centre of this sheet, in a flat cake. Turn the four corners of the paste over it, and roll out carefully, not to break the paste. Should it give way, flour the spot, that it may not stick to the roller. When very thin, sprinkle lightly with flour, fold up, and roll out four times more. Set in a cool place for an hour, roll out again, and cut into tartlet-shells or top crust for pies.
The bottom crust of pies may often be made of plainer pastry than the upper.