Vol. XXV · Cakes, Pastry and Sweets Plate 7 of 12choux, pâte à choux, profiteroles, éclairs, gougères, cream puffs, panade, steam leavening, eggs, piping, hollow, 泡芙MH

Choux.

A choux puff has no yeast, no baking powder and no whipped egg. It is blown up by the water in its own dough.

Choux paste begins on the stove: water (or milk), butter and salt brought to the boil, flour added all at once and stirred hard until the dough forms a ball and leaves a film on the pan. That cooking gelatinises the starch (VII.1) and drives off some water, making a paste that can absorb a large amount of egg without becoming runny. Eggs are beaten in one at a time, off the heat, until the paste is glossy and falls from the spoon in a thick V-shaped ribbon. Piped onto a tray, it goes into a hot oven.

There the paste's water — from the milk, the butter and the eggs — turns to steam inside, and the elastic, egg-rich dough balloons around it, as in a soufflé but with no foam to start (XVII.9). The egg proteins and gelatinised starch then set into a crisp shell with a hollow centre. Too little egg: the paste is stiff, rises little and cracks. Too much: it is runny, spreads and cannot hold the steam. Opening the oven early, or underbaking, lets the walls collapse as the steam condenses. The workshop adjusts the egg.

Below: the water share of a choux paste from 250 g water, 100 g butter and 150 g flour, dried on the heat for the minutes you choose and beaten with the grams of egg you choose (mass balance), and a teaching index of how well it puffs, best near the classic proportions.

What you will learn
Workshop
Mass balance: water = 250 g + 16 % of the butter + 75 % of the egg − about 5 g per minute evaporated while drying the panade; total likewise. Puff index (teaching): exp(−((egg − classic) ÷ 45 g)²), the classic being 225 g of egg after 2 minutes' drying, about 7 g more for each extra minute of drying; stiffer pastes crack, wetter ones spread.

Cook the paste, judge the egg, bake it dry

On the teaching index, the classic proportion — about 4½ eggs to this paste, dried two minutes — puffs best; with 180 g of egg the index falls to 0.37 (stiff, cracked), with 300 g to 0.06 (runny, flat). Eggs and flours vary, which is why recipes say "about" and cooks add the last egg a little at a time, stopping when the paste falls in a thick V and the groove made by a finger closes slowly.

Method: bring 250 g water (or half milk), 100 g butter and a pinch each of salt and sugar to a full boil; add 150 g flour at once and stir hard until a ball forms; keep stirring over low heat 1–2 minutes until a film coats the pan; cool 5 minutes; beat in about 4–5 eggs one by one to a glossy V. Pipe 3 cm mounds, flatten the tips with a wet finger, bake at 200 °C for 15 minutes without opening the door, then 170 °C for 15–20 more until deep golden and light; pierce each and let them dry in the cooling oven. Fill with pastry cream (XXV.9) or whipped cream (X.7); add cheese to the paste for gougères.

At the stove

Make a half batch of choux, divide the paste, and add one more spoonful of egg to half of it. Pipe and bake both; compare height and shape.

Choux was developed in sixteenth-century France and refined by Antonin Carême, who built the towering croquembouche from it; Chinese bakeries' 泡芙 and Japanese shu cream (from French chou à la crème) carried it across Asia in the twentieth century.

Terms

Panade
Flour cooked into boiling water and butter: the base of choux.
Steam leavening
Rising from water turning to steam inside a dough.
V-ribbon
The thick, glossy V a choux paste forms when it has enough egg.
Gougères
Cheese choux puffs.
Choux is cooked flour paste beaten with egg, blown hollow by steam and set into a crisp shell. Judge the egg by a glossy V-ribbon; bake hot then cooler, don't open the door early, and dry them.

Sources

  1. A teaching value chosen for the course: the right order of magnitude and shape, not a measurement of a particular food.
  2. H. McGee, On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, 2nd ed., Scribner, 2004.