Choux Pastry | Baking Processes | BAKERpedia (2024)

FAQs

What are the processes in choux pastry? ›

It's made by cooking flour with water and/or milk and butter, then mixing in eggs off heat to form a pipe-able, spoonable consistency. It's then cooked a second time, either by baking, frying, or poaching, depending on the specific recipe the choux is being used for.

Your dough should be shiny and smooth.

You will know it's ready when the pastry has a consistency that slowly closes in on itself once the spoon has passed through. Your choux ball is ready when you have a skin at the bottom of the pan, which takes about 2-3 minutes on medium heat.

When enough egg has been added the mixture will be glossy and thin enough that a large spoonful will fall heavily from the spoon in one lump (without shaking or tapping the spoon on the side of the saucepan), but thick enough that it doesn't slide off easily.

Thus choux dough is cooked twice, once on the stovetop and again in the oven. (Or deep-fried, in the case of beignets.) This double cooking helps to produce the airy interior. How that works is, heating the flour the first time causes the starch in it to gelatinize.

Puff pastry is made using a method known as lamination, where a block of butter is wrapped fully and sealed inside a dough. The dough then goes through a series of folds, where it is rolled out to a certain thickness and folded over onto itself.

Potential reasons for each fault include insufficient cooling, eggs added too quickly, not beating the mixture enough, incorrect baking temperature or time, insufficient baking, and allowing the liquid to cool too much before adding flour.

If a choux pastry dough is too runny, do not add extra flour. Instead, make a second batch of the cooked dough without eggs and let it cool before slowly mixing it into the runny dough until it reaches the proper consistency.

If you add too much eggs, the mixture will be runny and unusable. This is what the final dough/paste should look like. If you are not sure, place some of the mixture in the piping bag with a tip fitted, and try piping.

Why is my choux pastry not forming a ball? ›

If the puffs collapse it means there was too much moisture in them. So either you did not dry the dough enough, or they were not cooked enough. To avoid this I recommend drying the dough really well (see below) and cracking the door of the oven open when the choux are baked.

Bake for 25 – 35 minutes, depending on the size of the choux buns. As soon as the choux pastry comes out of the oven they must be turned over and a hole put into the bases. They are left upside down and put in the oven for a further 5 mminutes. This helps the steam to escape and stops the buns becoming soggy.

This fact means that it is more important to know how the finished paste should look and feel than it is to just follow the recipe. Finished choux paste should be soft, smooth, and be able to be piped.

Second, it is important to cook the flour for a few minutes before adding the eggs. This will help to develop the gluten in the flour, which will give the dough its structure. Finally, it is important to not overmix the dough after the eggs are added. Overmixing can make the dough tough.

I've written the recipe using plain (all-purpose) flour as it's the most accessible flour globally and one that most will have in their pantry. That said, choux pastry can also be made with bread or cake flour. Bread flour has a higher protein and gluten content, resulting in a sturdier pastry shell.

The starch grains on the surface become dextrinised in baking, thus giving a brown colour to the pastry. Amino acids and sugars also react to form brown products, via the Maillard reaction. If the oven is too cool that fat will melt before the starch gelatinises and the fat will run out.

The choux turns brown

In the oven, it slowly turns a light brown color. This is because of the Maillard reaction. Sugar from the flour and proteins from the eggs and flour react together, to form brown molecules. Freshly baked small choux buns, notice their light brown color.

Typical choux pastry formula includes:^2,3

Bring the milk, water, sugar, salt and butter to a boil, stir to combine. Remove from heat source, add the flour and continue stirring. Heat the mix again while stirring till the mixture becomes a cohesive mass and clears the side of the pot.

Once the pastry has risen to its maximum and the moisture from the batter has escaped, the protein (albumin) present within the eggs will coagulate (set) giving the choux pastry strength and structure.