Pâte à Choux Recipes

PATE A CHOUX

Steps:

• Bring butter, sugar, salt, and 1 cup water to a boil in a medium saucepan. Remove from heat. Using a wooden spoon, quickly stir in flour. Cook over medium-high heat, stirring constantly, until mixture pulls away from sides and a film forms on bottom of pan, about 3 minutes.
• Transfer to the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Mix on low speed until slightly cooled, about 1 minute. Raise speed to medium; add whole eggs, 1 at a time, until a soft peak forms when batter is touched with your finger. If peak does not form, lightly beat remaining egg white, and mix it into batter a little at a time until it does.

PATE A CHOUX DOUGH

Steps:

• Preheat oven to 450 degrees. In 2 quart pot, combine the butter and water. On a piece of wax or parchment paper, sift together the flour, salt and sugar. Bring the water and butter to a rolling boil, remove from heat and dump the flour mixture in all at once. Stir with a wooden spoon or paddle to incorporate.
• Return the saucepot to high heat and cook, stirring, for about one minute. The mixture will form a ball and coat the pan with a thin film.
• Transfer the mixture to a mixing bowl or standing mixer equipped with the paddle attachment. Mix the dough for a minute or so, on low speed, to release some of the heat. Add the eggs, one at a time, completely incorporating each one before adding the next. Beat until the dough gets thick and ribbony.
• Fit a pastry bag with a round #5 tip and fill with the warm dough. Line a heavy cookie sheet with parchment paper and anchor it to the tray with a little dab of the dough at each corner. Pipe about forty to forty five 1 1/2-inch mounds about 2 inches apart on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. Bake for 10 to 15 minutes, until golden and puffed. Reduce heat to 350 degrees and bake for another 10 minutes or until they are golden brown and there are no droplets of moisture in the crevices. Turn off oven and leave the choux to dry for another 10 minutes. Use when cool, or freeze, wrapped in a plastic bag, for 2-3 months.

SWEET OR SAVORY PATE A CHOUX

Steps:

• Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.
• Boil water, butter, and salt or sugar. Add flour and remove from heat. Work mixture together and return to heat. Continue working the mixture until all flour is incorporated and dough forms a ball. Transfer mixture into bowl of a standing mixer and let cool for 3 or 4 minutes. With mixer on stir or lowest speed add eggs, 1 at a time, making sure the first egg is completely incorporated before continuing. Once all eggs have been added and the mixture is smooth put dough into piping bag fitted with a round tip. Pipe immediately into golfball-size shapes, 2 inches apart onto parchment lined sheet pans. Cook for 10 minutes, then turn the oven down to 350 degrees F and bake for 10 more minutes or until golden brown. Once they are removed from the oven pierce with a paring knife immediately to release steam.

BAKED PâTE à CHOUX

Steps:

• Heat oven to 400 and grease a baking sheet with butter. Put the butter and a pinch of salt in a saucepan over high heat; add 1 cup water and bring to a boil. Turn the heat to low and add all the flour at once; stir constantly until the mixture pulls away from the pan and forms a ball, about 30 seconds. Remove the pan from the heat and beat in the eggs one at a time; use an electric mixer if you like, and beat until the mixture is smooth. (At this point, you can cover the dough and refrigerate it for up to two days.)
• If you're planning on piping out the dough, scoop it into a pastry bag with a 1/2-inch tip, or a plastic freezer bag with a corner cut off. Pipe the pastry onto the baking sheet, or just use two spoons to form your desired shape. Cream puffs should be circles about 1 inch wide and a little over 1 inch tall; éclairs should be 3-to-4-inch fingers, about 1 inch wide.
• Bake until the pastries are golden brown, nicely puffed up and sound hollow when you tap on them, about 30 minutes for cream puffs and 40 minutes for éclairs. Use a skewer to prick one or two holes in each one to allow the steam to escape; transfer to a rack and let cool to room temperature.
• To fill the pastries using a pastry bag, poke a hole into the pastry and pipe the filling into it, or cut off the top caps of each pastry, spoon in the filling, and close it up like a sandwich. (Éclairs can be slit open and filled, too.) Serve as is, or drizzle with chocolate sauce.

PATE A CHOUX

Steps:

• Preheat oven to 375.
• Place water, butter, sugar and salt in heavy saucepan and bring to boil.
• Add flour all at once and stir until mixture comes away from sides and forms a ball.
• Remove from heat.
• Put mixture in mixer with a paddle and mix on low to cool to warm, not hot.
• Add eggs one at a time, beating well to incorporate each before adding the next.
• After last egg is added, beat until smooth.
• With a piping bag and round tip, pipe mixture on to a parchment lined sheet pan.
• You can make as big or as long as you want.
• They will about double in size when cooked.
• Bake at 375 until they become,brown, light and hollow.
• Cool.

PâTE à CHOUX

Steps:

• Bring to boil the water, with butter and salt over high heat in a deep, wide pot or pan (we use a soup pot for its wider surface area).
• Add flour, reduce heat by 1/4 and stir vigorously and continuously to form a smooth, uniform dough, about a minute or 90 seconds. Take care not to scrape up the crust that forms on the bottom of the pan or reintroduce dry bits back into your smooth paste.
• Transfer to a mixing bowl, and vigorously beat in the eggs, one at a time, fully incorporating each egg before you add the next, ending with a sticky, smooth, tender and matte paste.
• Heat oven to 350, and place rack in middle.
• Transfer the choux paste into two disposable plastic piping bags, unequally divided; put 4 ounces (or about a cup) in one for the necks and the bulk of the paste in the other to form the bodies of the swans.
• Prepare two half-sheet pans by greasing and fitting with parchment. (Or use silpats; the greasing is only to keep the parchment from slipping when you are trying to pull your tip away during piping.)
• Cut just the very tip off the pastry bag with the smaller quantity, leaving the diameter of the opening quite small - just wide enough to pass a whole peppercorn or a lentil, for example.
• On one of the prepared sheet pans, pipe big, exaggerated question marks, like the ones on the deck of "Chance" cards in Monopoly. Start each question mark with a short drag of the tip against the parchment, creating a tiny beak as you go. There is ample paste to make mistakes and to practice - you will have plenty of necks even if you mess up a few.
• Now cut the tip of the other pastry bag with the bulk of the paste to leave the opening circumference about the size of a dime. Leaving a 1/2 inch between them, pipe plump little 2-to-3-inch teardrops of dough onto the other prepared sheet pan. I make some a little bigger than others so I can end up with cobs and pens - males and females - just for fun.
• Put both sheet pans into the oven together, and bake the bodies and necks for 8 to 10 minutes, until the necks are fully golden brown, leaving the oven door closed the whole time.
• Remove the necks, and linger for a few seconds with the oven door open, allowing the steam to escape. Close the door again, and finish baking the bodies 25 to 35 minutes more, until they're fully golden brown and toasted. Shut off oven, and let swans dry inside for 20 minutes before removing.
• With a small, sharp knife, slice the domes off the bodies of the swans, and cut them in half, creating two wings, placing them back into the cavity of the swan for now.
• Run the tiny tips of the necks through a flame - a candle or match or Bic lighter are all fine - to briefly blacken. They often catch on fire; blow them out!
• Fill the bodies with diplomat cream, place the wings cut edge up in the cavity, place the necks and gently dust with powdered sugar.

MARTHA'S PATE A CHOUX

Steps:

• In a medium saucepan, combine butter, sugar, salt and 1 cup water over medium-high heat. Bring to a boil and immediately remove from heat. Using a wooden spoon, quickly stir in flour until combined.
• Return pan to medium-high heat and cook, stirring vigorously, until mixture pulls away from the sides and a film forms on the bottom of the pan, about 3 minutes. Remove from heat and transfer contents to a bowl to cool slightly, about 3 minutes. Add eggs, one at a time, stirring vigorously until incorporated between each addition. Use immediately.

PATE A CHOUX

Steps:

• Using a large pot, bring the Water, Butter, Sugar and Salt to a boil over high heat.
• Chef's Note: It is important to cube the Butter into small pieces so that it melts completely before the Water comes to a full boil. If the Water boils too soon, there will be too much evaporation and the final dough will be too dry.
• As soon as the Water reaches a boil, add the Bread Flour in a single addition. Using a wooden spoon, stir the mixture over medium-high heat until a homogeneous dough forms. Continue to actively stir the dough over the heat ("Dessecher") until it forms a ball that easily pulls away from the side of the pot - approximately two to three minutes.
• Chef's Note: When adding the dry ingredients, stir aggressively - the dough should form quickly. Cooking the dough mixture for a couple of minutes causes the starches in the Bread Flour to gelatinize and also dries the dough.
• Transfer the dough to a mixer fitted with a paddle attachment and beat the dough on medium speed for several minutes, releasing heat and steam. While the dough cools, beat the Eggs and Egg Yolks together in a separate bowl and set aside.
• Once the dough is no longer hot, add the Eggs in no fewer than six additions. After each addition, mix the dough until the Egg is completely incorporated. When all of the Eggs have been added, the dough should be slightly fluid (i.e. when a trench is drawn through the center of the dough, it should fill back in within a couple of seconds).
• Chef's Note: It is important that the dough cools slightly before the Eggs are added or else the Eggs will cook. However, if the dough is too cold, the Eggs will not mix in well.
• Form and bake the Pate a Choux according to the specific recipe. Most pastries made with Pate a Choux are baked in a high temperature oven (i.e. 400+ degrees Fahrenheit) for over 20 minutes.