Choux Pastry

A paste cooked on the hob before it is cooked in the oven, which is why it rises on steam with no raising agent in it.

Egg. Vegetarian, but not vegan — contains egg, dairy (butter), dairy (whole milk).

Ingredients

• 125 ml water
• 125 ml whole milk
• 100 g butter, in pieces
• 1 teaspoon caster sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 150 g plain flour, sifted
• 4 eggs, beaten, at room temperature

Method

1. IT IS COOKED TWICE: ONCE IN THE PAN AND ONCE IN THE OVEN. The flour goes into boiling liquid and is then beaten over the heat for two or three minutes to drive water off and gelatinise the starch. That dried-out paste is what holds its shape round the steam that lifts it. Skip it and you have a wet batter that spreads and stays flat -- there is no baking powder here and nothing else to lift it.
2. THE EGGS GO IN OFF THE HEAT, ONE AT A TIME, AND THE LAST ONE MAY NOT BE NEEDED. Eggs beaten into a paste still on the burner scramble. And the amount of egg is not a fixed quantity: it depends how much water the hob stage drove off, so the last egg is added a little at a time and stopped at the texture, not at the count.
3. THE TEXTURE IS THE WHOLE JUDGEMENT. Lift the spoon: the paste should fall in a thick V and hold a soft peak that slowly bends. Too stiff and it will not rise; too slack and it spreads.
4. AND THE OVEN DOOR STAYS SHUT for the first twenty minutes. The structure is steam until the walls set, and opening the door drops the temperature and collapses them. This cannot be undone.
5. Water, milk, butter, sugar and salt into a pan and brought to a full rolling boil, so the butter is completely melted before the water starts going.
6. Off the heat, all the flour tipped in at once and beaten hard with a wooden spoon until it comes together in a ball.
7. Back on a medium heat and beaten 2 to 3 MINUTES, pushing the paste around the pan. It will smell faintly of biscuit and leave a thin film on the base.
8. Tipped into a bowl and spread up the sides, left 4 minutes to cool to warm. Hot paste cooks the eggs.
9. Eggs beaten in one at a time, each disappearing completely. After the third, added in small amounts and the texture tested each time.
10. Piped onto lined trays -- fingers, buns or rings depending on what it is for.
11. Baked at 200C for 20 MINUTES WITHOUT OPENING THE DOOR, then down to 170C for 12 to 15 minutes until deep gold and light in the hand.
12. Pierced at once to let the steam out, as the dish being made requires, and cooled on a rack. Unfilled they keep a day in a tin and crisp again in a warm oven.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under France · All recipes