Pâte à Choux - Everything You Need To Know For Perfect Puffs
When I was in culinary school, there was one thing we had to cook that I just could not get right. It is one of the fundamental pastry techniques of classic French cooking that I'm sure you've had a million times but never known the proper name - Pate a Choux. (Choux means cabbage and pate is paste - Only the French can name something "cabbage paste" and still make it taste good!) This is a dough recipe that is used in a wide variety of very familiar dishes like eclairs, cream puffs and gougeres, but also applied to use in churros, potato croquettes and even gnocchi. It is pretty straightforward in terms of procedure but in order to get it just right, there is a ton of nuance and technique.
Fast forward 15 years or so, I've done a lot more cooking and spent a lot of time not thinking about things besides Pate a Choux. Enter a little Sous Chef named Zoe who only really wants to eat sweets and I needed to come up with something new we could make together. Hello mon petit choux! I knew Zoe would love this dish but I wanted to learn how to do it right.
I spent a ton of time researching recipes and am pretty certain that this is the absolute best you will find. I cannot take any credit, the majority of it I learned from a phenomenal chef blogger at www.ChefIso.com, but I am still happy to share the cumulative result of my research with you.
Pate a Choux is a culinary minefield that has left many a chef's body parts strewn about the battlefield. Choux might not rise at all or they might rise and immediately collapse. Choux might be over baked and burned or limp and soggy. But when made right, a perfect choux paste will yield a crisp, yet light crust around a perfectly empty cavity, creating the perfect vessel to stuff with any number of delicious fillings.
To achieve this level of puffed perfection turns out to actually not be all that hard. Just follow my lead and take these crucial steps:
1. Use bread flour - more gluten equals more stability and structure. If you think of a choux as the dome on st. peter's church, do you really want to use the second rate mortar?
2. Use a thermometer to accurately gauge when your paste has been cooked properly prior to adding the eggs - This moment is crucial. The initial cooking does not dry out the dough so much as prime it to accept and absorb the eggs (gelatinize is the fancy chef term). Think of the flour mixture as a roast and the eggs as a glaze. What will absorb the flavor better, a cold, raw hunk of meat or a cut that has been roasting for a while where the fibers of the meat itself have relaxed and give way with the gentlest prod of a spoon.
3. Skip the Wash - Another traditional recipe hallmark is brushing the puffs or eclairs with an egg wash before baking. This only serves to weight them down. Instead, lightly spray the puffs with cooking spray before baking. The light coating of fat will add more than enough conductivity to brown the dough without reducing any lift.
4. Bake Lower Longer - Most recipes call for an initial high temperature to create the rise and then turning down the oven to a lower temp to finish the bake. This seems like sound logic but can actually yield a structure that cannot support its own weight and that will collapse before it can fully set. With a slower, more even temperature, the dough will stil; rise but also form a more uniform crisp texture.
5. Poke a Hole In It - After baking, the choux is still filled with steam. That is after all how they rise - the butter and egg melt and cook, releasing steam which is trapped by a strong structure of gluten and other proteins resulting in the signature puff. Think blowing up a balloon. This one is filled with steam though and what is steam? Just really hot water. As it cools this water returns back to a liquid, dissolving that beautiful crisp structure you worked so hard to create! To counteract this sabotage we create hole for which the steam to escape and then, in a very warm oven turned low or better yet off, we return the choux to cool in an environment that is the "anti-steam" hot and dry.
So why don't you give it a try? Worst thing that happens is one of the above mentioned choux fails. If this happens just start again! It's not like you are working with foie gras and caviar here. This is how you learn.
Ingredients
- 120 g Butter (8 TBS)
- 120 g Milk (1/2 C)
- 120 g Water (1/2 C)
- pinch of salt
- 145 g Bread Flour (1 C) (AP Flour is fine but not as good)
- 4 Large Eggs
Instructions
- In a small pot over medium high heat combine water, milk, butter and salt.
- When the liquid JUST STARTS TO BOIL, Immediately add all of the flour.
- Lower the heat to medium and cook, stirring constantly until it reaches 175 F and pulls away from the sides and leaves a thin dry film on the bottom of the pot.
- Transfer to a bowl and cool about 5 minutes or until the temperature drops below 130.
- Add eggs one at a time, stirring until fully incorporated before adding the next.
- If your batter is too dry and does not do what I am showing in the video, you might need to add all or part of one more egg.
- To do so, beat 1 egg in a small bowl and add it to the batter in thirds, stirring between each addition to determine if that amount is enough using the cues demonstrated.
- If the batter appears to be too loose, like it just falls off the spoon like gloppy oatmeal, don’t freak out, it’s just eggs and flour after all, but also acknowledge that something went wrong and you need to start
over. - Once the batter is complete transfer to a piping bag. From this point it can be refrigerated for
one day maximum or piped out and frozen.
- To pipe even shapes, use a ruler or cookie cutter and a marker to draw guidelines. Remember though to flip the parchment paper over before piping. You will still see the lines, but you will avoid eating any marker ink!
- I find that a star tip creates ridges that make the dough rise more evenly. This makes the structure more stable, so your beautifully piped puffs don't collapse. A round tip is fine as well. Either way use something that is about ½” wide.
- Before baking, lightly spray eclairs and puffs with cooking spray to aid browning. Many recipes call for an egg wash but I find this leads to mixed results. If using craquelin, place it on top of the puffs now.
- Bake at 360ᵒ F for 30-40 minutes until golden on the top, slightly darker on the bottom and fully puffed. Many thanks to chefiso.com for this excellent technique. The even lower temp bake results in the best choux I’ve ever made.
- After baking, turn off the oven, poke holes in the top andbottom of the puffs then return to the warm oven to cool. This long slow cooling will dry out any steam
and leave the choux perfectly crisp.
Once the puffs are totally cool, proceed with filling or glazing with whatever you like.
Gougeres
- Prepare choux as above but add ½ cup grated cheese
(parmesan, gruyere and cheddar all work well) and bake as indicated. Serve warm
For Pommes Dauphine
- prepare the choux paste with water only(replace the quantity of milk with additional water) then combine with cooked and riced potatoes. I like the ratio of equal parts by weight, dough and potato, which results in a creamy, bread like fritter, but most recipes use a ratio of approximately 2:1, potato to choux paste. While mixing, stir in ¼ cup of cheese and 2 TBS butter.
- Roll into cylinders or balls and deep fry at 360ᵒ until golden brown and cooked through.
The fritters will initially sink then rise to the surface. Cook for about 2-3 minutes after they rise
depending on the size of the fritter or until done. Cut one open to test before serving. There should be an even color and no raw dough in the center.