Preparing puff pastry dough is elaborate and time consuming. There are several different ways to construct the dough-fat sandwich, and several different ways to make the folds; here for simplicity I’ll describe the standard one.
Early Recipes for Laminated Pastry: Early English “Puff Paste”
Gervase Markham’s recipe for “puff paste” is a cross between laminated and sheet pastries.
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, and 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; and 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 or what dish else you please and so bake it.
—The English Housewife ,
