Chapter 72 – Puff Pastry
Miss Arrowot began her duties as an intern teacher the day after she arrived at the domus. She had even read the entire one-inch-thick guidebook before following Jade into class.
She was a quiet one. Jade barely noticed her presence in the classroom, yet she was highly attentive, always knowing when to pass Jade the teaching materials and when to assist with small tasks such as cleaning the blackboard or handing her the chalk.
After Jade dismissed the class and answered the student’s questions, Miss Arrowot quietly joined the other students in arranging the tables and helped Clara prepare the threads and embroidery frame. When Jade finished, she turned to find Miss Arrowot and Clara conversing in low voices.
“Miss Arrowot, how is your first day so far?” Jade inquired politely when the new intern teacher ended her conversation with Clara.
“Beyond my expectations,” Miss Arrowot praised. “I have seen many ragged schools, but this is the finest I have encountered. Clean, tidy, organized, and the students are lively, with bright and eager eyes!”
“Really?” Jade cast a quick glance at the somewhat uneven tables, the dust gathered in the corners, and the worn old furniture – the only part she truly felt proud of was that there was no rubbish on the floor. In this era, even rubbish held value to the poor, so none would willingly drop something and leave it ownerless.
“Well, thanks to the older students, they do a very great job controlling the younger ones.” Jade shrugged. “Tomorrow, try standing beside me and answer their questions about the textbook. Most of them ask about the grammar, the meaning of words, and how to understand the passages – I think you will do a better job than me in that area. As for the tuition class… we can talk about that this evening after we dismiss it, if that is that fine with you, Miss Arrowot?”
Miss Arrowot nodded. Her eyes widened slightly, but Jade did not particularly care what had surprised her* – this was only the second day they had known each other, hardly an appropriate time to pry into someone one barely knew.
Clara turned to Jade as the three of them headed toward the dining hall. “Jade, can you… um, make me some treats?”
“Hm?” Jade tilted her head. “What kind of treats?”
“Something sweet, and not usually seen in domus.” Clara gave a light sigh. “Tomorrow is Papa’s birthday. Mama always celebrates our birthdays with such delight… I hope she will be happy tomorrow, and not weeping in her room while remembering our moments with Papa.”
“Oh… Alright.” Jade nodded slowly. “Any favourite preferences?”
“Well, with our current circumstances, I do not think we can afford anything too fancy,” Clara said with furrowed brows. “So, Jade, just do whatever you can manage. I shall pay you out of my own pocket.”
Numerous recipes ran through Jade’s mind. “I’ll try to think of something. At the very least, we can scout for fresh eggs and I can make you a butterless cake…” Her voice trailed off at the end.
It was winter. Fresh eggs were hard to find, and even if they could be found, they would be rather costly. Jade was not sure of Whitcombe’s financial situation, but Clara had not bought anything new since living in the domus, so it seemed best not to spend much on the treats.
Miss Arrowot added, “I can help if you need someone to scout for fresh eggs.”
“Thank you, Miss Arrowot,” Clara replied with a smile, though her brows remained knitted with worry.
Jade, her mind still searching for a suitable recipe, wandered absentmindedly behind the other ladies into the dining hall.
Water-glassed eggs can’t be used for cakes, because the white won’t beat into foam. Fresh eggs are expensive… What do we have in domus? Malt sugar to replace regular sugar, lard to replace butter – yeah, the lard here doesn’t taste quite right in pastry, but it’s workable – and we’ve got tallow, flour, beans, offals and some meats, salt and pepper, beetroots and carrots… What else…
“Sensei,” Josh said as he approached with his meal and sat beside Jade, “I am off to the stall today. Is there anything you would like me to purchase?”
Without the penny skewers, the stall sold only fried chips and needed merely two students to manage it. Josh, Raymond, and Matt had returned to their normal schedule of taking shifts at the stall.
Jade glanced at her pupil. Fried… With oil… Treats… Fancy desert… Oh!
“I don’t think I need anything, but I think I’ll need you tonight, or whenever the kitchen is free.” Jade quickly did the calculations in her mind, and decided to test a recipe.
Josh’s eyes lit up. “A new recipe, Sensei? Not in the bakehouse?”
“Well, it could be baked, but…” Jade shrugged. “The iron oven needs a lot of coal to heat up for proper baking, and since I’m testing on a small scale, it would be a huge waste to burn coals just for a few pieces of pastry. Heating an oil pot is much easier.”
Josh asked, “Can it be sold at the stall if we manage to make it tonight?”
This simple question stunned Jade: Yeah, why hadn’t I thought of making use of Chinese pastry recipes? A lot of Chinese treats and pastry don’t need steaming or baking, they can be deep-fried! And there are Western treats that use deep-frying too!
She blinked, and replied, “Well, we shall see tonight. It requires some skill.”
Clara, who had been quietly listening to both master and pupil, immediately asked, “May I come along as well? Are you going to deep-fry some dough, Jade?”
“It does involve deep-frying and dough, but not in the way you are picturing,” Jade explained. She noticed the curiosity on Miss Arrowot’s face, and invited her as well. “Miss Arrowot, would you be interested in learning more about the kitchen? We are going to create something pleasant to the eye.”
“If you do not mind that I can not provide much help, I would love to join you in the kitchen tonight,” Miss Arrowot nodded eagerly.
“Alright then, I’ll go speak to Sister Geenia about it and get the ingredients prepared.” Jade rose and headed straight toward the nuns.
That night, multiple oil lamps fitted with self-made light refractors appeared in the kitchen.
Following Jade’s instruction, Josh quickly squeezed the juice from beetroots and carrots. Beside the bowls of juice sat a small pot containing fava bean paste. He was very familiar with bean paste, as he used it in his piping practice. However, the pot before him was different – with extra malt sugar added and pan-fried with lard beforehand, making it darker in colour and sweeter in taste than the version he usually used.
“The bean paste will serve as the filling, and we’re going to wrap it in puff pastry,” Jade explained to the other two maidens, who were unfamiliar with kitchen work.
Josh jerked his head toward Jade. “But Sensei, we don’t have butter!”
Jade had often sighed over her inability to teach Josh how to make puff pastry due to their financial difficulties and inability to afford butter. Thus, It was a surprise to hear his Miss Jade say they could make puff pastry today, without any butter.
“Well, that’s a different technique altogether,” Jade shrugged with a wry smile. “It simply never crossed my mind to make use of that technique before today. Anyway, we’re going to make puff pastry with lard, and it’ll taste quite different from the puff pastry most people here know.”
Jade was not sure how food history had developed in this world, but she had once caught sight of a croissant shaped exactly like the ones she remembered from her previous life in a confectioner’s display window. With a little research, she discovered that puff pastry not only existed here, but was also considered an elegant and luxurious treat, something the poor would never dare imagine tasting.
Making puff pastry was a rare skill, possessed only by cooks from foreign lands or those trained abroad. As a baker who knew how to make puff pastry, Jade was pleased; if everything went smoothly, she would likely have little trouble finding work in such places if she ever applied. This gave her more confidence and less worry about eventually leaving her position as a ragged schoolmistress.
“You have read the recipe I gave you, you know how we layer the butter into the dough.” Jade turned to Josh and began her lecture, while the other two maidens listened with equal curiosity. “We need to slab the butter inside the dough – like a pillow, but a flat one – being careful not to leave any air pockets. Then, to maintain its shape and delicacy, the pillow must stay cold. Ideally, it should be chilled with ice, and we should use a marble tabletop because that kind of stone stays cool.”
“Yes, I remember.” Josh nodded and recited the recipe’s notes. “Best practice would be soaking our hands in cold water as well, so the temperature will not affect the dough, because butter melts easily and would blend into it. If that happens, we would end up with a heavily buttered bread dough instead of layered puff pastry.”
“Exactly. All those precautions are because butter melts easily and cannot maintain its shape.” Jade motioned for Josh to come closer, and pointed at the different piles of ingredients on the tabletop. “Today, the melting part will be less of a concern, because this is a very different technique.”
There were four piles of ingredients on the kitchen counter.
One was the juices and bean paste Josh had prepared.
One was flour with a larger portion of lard, while the other two were flour with a very small portion of lard.
“We’re going to make two-coloured dough. One will serve as the petals, and the other as the pollen and inner parts of the flower.” She placed the beetroot and carrot juice beside the two piles of ingredients. Then, she pointed at the flour with the larger portion of lard. “This, will serve as the butter portion in our recipe.”
Josh quickly grasped the idea before the other two maidens could process it. “And we make the pillow, just like how we were supposed to do with the butter!”
However, he soon furrowed his brows. “But, can this technique truly produce the same layering effect as butter and dough in puff pastry?”
“Not exactly the same, but very similar.” Jade smacked her lips.
It had become a distant memory to her; she had attended a Chinese pastry class during her time at the pastry institute. It had only been a month-long course, with two lessons per week, and the memories of making these pastries had long been buried beneath countless days spent baking cakes and piping cream frosting – skills she had far more reason to retain, given her stable job as a cake decorator.
Now that she actually needed to use it again, she felt somewhat nervous.
The beetroot juice was mixed with flour and lard, shaped into dough, then set aside beneath a damp cloth to rest.
Clara asked, “Why must it rest?”
“To loosen the gluten structure in the dough,” Jade replied absentmindedly as she watched Josh mix the carrot dough. Josh was still young, his strength did not yet match Jade’s, so he needed more time to knead dough. Though ever since learning from Jade, he had developed some arm muscles. Still, in Jade’s eyes, he remained terribly skinny, and she had already begun planning how to feed him more nutrients and protein in the future once she secured a position as a pastry cook.
“Gluten?” Clara exchanged a glance with Miss Arrowot, who returned an equally bewildered look. Both had received similar education from girls’ schools and governess, and neither had ever heard the term before. Clara asked again, “What is gluten?”
“Gluten is many chains of…” Jade lifted her gaze and noticed two curious faces staring at her. She snapped back to the present and quickly changed her explanation. “Gluten is something formed inside dough after flour mixes with water. It is the by-product left when we wash out the starch… Why don’t you two knead some plain dough with flour and water? Later I can show you what I mean.”
And thus, Clara and Miss Arrowot began kneading their first dough. Contrary to the sticky mess they had imagined, Jade gave careful, step-by-step instructions on making a drier dough, using tools first.
“Flour into the bowl, drizzle water in, and stir with a large spoon… Yes, a little more water… Alright, that’s enough… It may look like the water is insufficient, but it is actually enough. Now, this is a bench scrapper – nothing fancy, just a simple wooden board. Use it to scrape and press the clumps… Yes, mix it, press it. It starts to look more like a dough. You may now dust your hands with flour and start kneading… Ever seen a cat purring while pushing with its paws? Yup, alternate both palms, push and pull while pressing it… Actually, if you know how to wash clothes, you may use that same motion when kneading dough as well.”
Jade nodded as she instructed them, while ordering Josh to mix the final portion of ingredients – flour and lard – with no worries about gluten development, making it very easy to combine into a lump.
When the dough in the two maidens’ hands had finally formed into shape, Jade asked them to stop and picked one up to explain, “See the surface? It’s quite jaggy, right? Not entirely smooth. In baking – or whenever we need dough – we want the surface smooth. Now, set them aside and let them rest. We’ll focus on these flower treats first.”
She divided all the ingredients in half, using one set for demonstrations and the other for Josh’s practice.
The rest followed much the same process as making puff pastry for croissants: pillow the lard dough with coloured dough as the covering sheet, layer it with three folds, and let it rest for a minute or two before folding it again with four folds. After that, flatten it into a five-millimetre sheet with a rolling pin and cut it with round cutters – a larger one for the red dough, and a smaller one for the orange dough.
The other two maidens had divided the bean paste into small balls, which were then wrapped in the orange circles.
“Now, we need to make some cuts here.” Jade took a small knife in hand. “Halfway only, not cutting all the way through. These will serve as the pollen. Then, we wrap the red circles over it… Yes, the opening should be sealed at the bottom, seal it with a dab of water. If you want to add fragrance, you may use egg wash instead of water. Egg wash seals better for this.”
Finally, Jade made three cuts across the red surface, creating six petals – which the others somehow understood in theory, though none of them quite knew what to expect.
“Alright, heat the tallow, Josh.” Jade moved two lamps closer to the oil pot. It was filled with fresh tallow the students had rendered that afternoon in the kitchen. Usually, Raymond, Matt, or Josh would take it to the stall, but tonight it was being used here first.
“Slowly, Josh. This needs to fry at a lower temperature… Slightly above boiling point, because we want to preserve the colours. High heat would brown everything.”
To be precise, it should have been around 120-130°C, but with no thermometer available, Jade resorted to the traditional method – sticking chopsticks or a piece of wood into the oil and observing the bubbling. The oil reached the desired temperature when only a drizzle of tiny bubbles appeared, like the fizz in carbonated drinks.
“Josh, pass me the strainer.” Jade placed one of the budding flowers into the strainer, and carefully lowered it into the heated tallow. “Come, Josh, watch closely.”
Right before their eyes, the budding flower made of flour and lard, hissing and bubbling in the oil bath, slowly unfurled its reddish petals. One by one, the outermost petals opened wide, while the inner petals spread more gently, layer by layer, until they revealed the golden centre within – fuzzy and jagged in random strands, formed by the thin slices Jade had made on the surface of the orange dough. Beneath the strands lay a pale-coloured filling, looking very much like the heart of a flower.
The flower bloomed.
Jade touched the petals with the tip of a spoon, listened to the crisp crackle, and lifted the strainer once it was done.
“Now I present to you – the Water Lily Puff,” Jade let out a soft sigh, satisfied that her long-forgotten skill had not abandoned her.