Using unsalted butter in your choux pastry will give you more control of the flavour. We use cake flour in our cream puff baking kits. However, there are many choux pastry recipes you can find online that use different types of flour.
Using cake flour will give your choux pastry a light and airy texture. There will be more room for the delicious pastry cream filling as well. Some bakers prefer all purpose or bread flour because the high protein content makes the choux pastry hold their shape better. These flours also give choux pastry a thick and crisp shell. Use a fine-mesh sieve for the best results! Although choux pastry is meant to be delicate, it still needs enough gluten to hold its shape when baked. After melting the butter with the water over the stove, add all the flour in one go, then give the mixture a vigorous stir until the flour is well combined with the wet ingredients, and cook until it no longer sticks to the pot.
There is enough gluten in your dough to provide structure at this stage, but it will not make your choux pastry too tough. Know when to stop, and your choux pastry will turn out just right. Doing so will prevent the eggs from cooking when you add them in. Try flattening the dough along the sides of a bowl to cool it down quickly. This will also help to give your puffs a lightly crisp texture since more water will evaporate from the dough.
The proper way to mix eggs into the flour mixture is by adding a small amount at a time, then stirring the mixture vigorously after each addition.
Adding all the eggs at once will only make them splash around and make it much harder to incorporate them completely.
Just like how bread dough needs to pass the windowpane test , your choux pastry dough should pass the String Test. The String Test does not target gluten development, but determines if the dough has reached the ideal consistency.
Take a bit of dough using your thumb and index finger, then pull your fingers apart. Another way to test your choux dough is by performing the V test. Add the salt and the sugar to the water. Stirring the water frequently while it warms up ensures that the salt, sugar and butter melt before the water comes to a boil.
Mix immediately for about 45 seconds, to make sure there are absolutely no lumps. Then cook the dough further on the stove so that enough moisture evaporates to get a good dough. A lot of recipes will talk of different signs to look for when cooking the dough — from the dough pulling away from the sides of the pan, to the dough looking like mashed potatoes, or leaving a film of dough on the bottom of the pan.
Heating the dough for too long can cause the butter to split from the dough as well. This can cook the eggs, and even give your choux an eggy taste. The way I prefer to cool down my dough is to place the eggs in a bowl, and then flatten the dough along the sides of the bowl. This increases the surface area, so it cools down faster, plus more water evaporates as you do this.
Some recipes call for mixing the dough in a stand mixer for a couple of minutes. The amount of eggs added is variable. As mentioned earlier, I like to have all the eggs whisked well in a jug first, before adding it to the dough. This is because I can add a little at a time until I get the consistency I like. Whisking them beforehand ensures that you get an even mix of egg white and yolks being added to the dough at all times. Mix in each addition of eggs before you add the next.
Not good. Because when you added water to cook the dough previously, how much water gets evaporated during the cooking process can vary a lot. How you measured the water, what saucepan you used to cook the dough, how long you cooked the dough can all have an impact on how much water is left in the dough. This image shows the subtle difference in choux pastry dough consistencies. On left, the dough has almost enough eggs. On the right, the perfect amount of eggs, where the choux pastry dough is smoother, and has a glossy sheen.
I use a combination of both tests to check the consistency of the dough. I prefer the finger test over the V test. However, I would recommend using both at the beginning.
Make sure the piping tip is just touching the surface of the piped dough, and move up as you go. This will help create less ripples and folds. This way you will have less cracks in your shell.
Alternatively, you can use a spoon or a mini cookie scoop to spoon the dough on to a baking sheet as well. I do recommend piping though. This way your choux pastry will rise perfectly upwards, and not be lopsided. Remember to use a damp finger to flatten the apex or any points, otherwise these points will burn when you bake the profiterole shells. Another trick I use to get the choux pastry shells to expand even more is to spray the baking tray with some water.
For more in-depth details and pictures, check out my Chocolate Eclairs post. Eclairs are a bit trickier than profiteroles when it comes to maintaining their shape. With eclairs, I also prefer to use a French star tip over a round tip. This really helps with maintaining the eclair shell shape. I also prefer to use bread flour, so that the dough will be more sturdy than with AP flour. Eclairs bake better on silpat than on parchment paper! For more details, check out this post for tips on how to pipe eclairs and make classic chocolate eclairs.
Some recipes call for choux pastry to be baked at two different temperatures. If this works for you, go ahead. As I mentioned earlier, I find that the high temperature makes the shells expand too much, causing cracks. This means you should never open the door during the first minutes of baking for standard-sized choux pastry; the time goes down for smaller shells and up for larger ones. I wait till the shells are golden colored before opening the door.
This prevents steam from escaping too early, which will cause the shells to collapse. I used to prick each choux pastry shell with a toothpick as soon as they came out of the oven and were cooling down, in order to dry out the shells.
So now I open the oven door at the minute mark, prick each shell with a toothpick or skewer during that last mins of baking, and allow the steam inside the shells to escape. Use a sharp toothpick to pierce the casings. For larger pate a choux pastries more than 2. There are many different types of filling that you can use to fill profiteroles or eclairs!
The most popular filling is vanilla pastry cream, which is also known as creme patissiere. You can get the recipe for creme patissiere right here.
OR if you prefer chocolate creme patissiere chocolate pastry cream instead, get the recipe for that right here. You can get the recipe for Salted Caramel diplomat cream in the recipe for Choux au craquelin with salted caramel cream. This will give you a softer shell, but it will have more flavor because of the milk.
I prefer bread flour to make eclairs, and AP flour for profiteroles. However, a dry concentrated fruit powder mixed in with the cream will not affect the consistency at all. Freeze-dried fruit powders are available online — do try the passion fruit, it is absolutely delicious and my favourite! Then use your weighing scales to work out the amount of filling you need to pipe into each of the three holes. Your friends and family will wonder how you managed to get the cream into such a perfect-looking bake!
Learn more about her food and her travels on her blog. You are viewing this website with an old browser please update to a newer version of Internet Explorer here. Plus we may have over mixed it. We did use 5 eggs because it seemed too thick without the 5th egg but next time I may try 4.
Looks like we will have some trial and error until we get the perfect pastry shell. Thanks for the suggestions! The taste was great, just what we hoped for… looking forward to adding a nice Italian pastry cream to it eventually. Thanks for your great info and instructions for making choux pastry!
I made two batches that had to be thrown away before I came upon this recipe and tried one more time — and this time my cream puffs were perfect and received rave reviews! Yay, so happy you came across my post and that it was helpful!!! Thank you, Rebecca, for sharing your feedback!
I hope you can read this. I have this problem. It was so frustrating that my whole batch was like that. Hi, Michael. If so, what kind brand of parchment paper did you use? I just noticed that I was using wax paper instead of parchment paper my bad. Hi I got a beautiful choux au craquelin that was delightfully crisp the day it was baked. I kept the empty shells in an airtight container after they cooled but the very next day they become soggy. Is that normal or did I do something wrong? Hi, Cheri.
But for unfilled eclair shells, they usually stay crisp when stored in an airtight container. I like mine to stay crispy. I wanna try making this twice this week—once for Wed and once for Sunday or Monday of next week. What would taste fresher on Sunday? Hi, Christin.
You can refrigerate the dough for up to 2 days, and bake the puffs the day before serving. Or you can bake the puffs and freeze them until the day of serving. Hi, I just made choux puffs, they really puffed up, crisp shell. Thank you, Roxana. Hi, Roxana. So, choux dough is made with lots of eggs. Once cooled, or chilled completely, the egg taste subsides a lot. Also, once you fill the choux pastry with the filling, everything should taste balanced. Hope this helps, and I really hope you were able to enjoy them with filling.
Thank you for your feedback! Great tips! Tried this recipe for the first time today and they turned pretty good in terms of taste. They were light a crisp too. Some not much at all to even really make any space in the middle.
The ones that did puff out some did have a space. I thought they looked a little small when I piped them. Very detailed recipe by the way. Really appreciate how you explain not only what to do but why.
Hi, Daniel. Thank you for your feedback and providing details! Mine are a little wider than a finger, before baking. Too much moisture content in the batter. Also was your batter too runny? If so, you may have added a bit too much egg. Too much flour can make the batter too dense, thus prevent rise.
How did you measure your flour?
0コメント