How to make pâte à choux
I’m fascinated by pâte à choux and its riffability and I think you will be, too
This is the dough from which so many good things spring. Think cream puffs and profiteroles, éclairs and Paris-Brest, gâteau St. Honoré, churros and beignets, my beloved gougères and more and more. The cream puff clan is large, delicious and fun. I’ve written about pâte à choux before, so here, I’m just going to give you the information you need to make this magical dough. I’m also going to bet that once you learn to make it, you’ll be making it often. And forever.
The OG (original Greenspan) Gougères
A note on my personal history with pâte à choux: We go back a long way. Over the years, I’ve made lots of cream puffs and even more gougères from pâte à choux and I kept tinkering with the recipe. I changed the number of eggs in some recipes; I added an egg white in some other recipes. I started some batches in a hot oven and then turned the temperature down; I did others in a straight 375-degrees-F oven, and some in a straight 350-degrees-F oven. I dried some in a turned-off oven for a longish time; and for a shortish time; and for no time at all.
Recently, Mary Dodd, who’s been my recipe-tester for more than a dozen years, and I took a walk down Cream-Puff Memory Lane and here’s where we ended up: We loved them all! We loved everything we’d made every which way we made them! Call us easy, but as near as we can tell, there's a lot of wiggle room with the dough and the puffs — they look fancy, but they're push-overs.
Here's my current go-to recipe for pâte à choux — you’ll find my latest cream puff recipe here. As I've said before, and as I'll always say, if you've got a recipe that you love, use it.
PÂTE À CHOUX
Click here for printable recipe
GOOD TO KNOW BEFORE YOU START
Make and bake … or don’t: It’s easiest and best to shape the dough as soon as it’s made, while it’s warmish and easily pipeable, spoonable or scoopable. Once you’ve made the puffs or the éclairs or the rings or whatever, you can freeze them. Freezing the UNbaked dough is literally the best party trick I know. With a bunch of puffs or gougères or whatever you fancy stowed in the freezer, you just have to bake them the day or moment you need them. You can freeze them once they’re baked, but they’ll lose a little of that fresh-baked texture and taste.
Makes enough dough for 10 to 12 large cream puffs.
INGREDIENTS
1/2 cup (120 ml) milk
1/2 cup (120 ml) water
1 stick (8 tablespoons; 4 ounces; 113 grams) unsalted butter, cut into 4 pieces
1 tablespoon sugar (optional)
1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
1 cup (136 grams) all-purpose flour
4 large eggs
Photo: Mary Dodd
DIRECTIONS
Put the milk, water, butter, sugar (if using), and salt in a medium saucepan and bring to a boil over medium heat. When the butter has melted, add the flour all at once, grab a sturdy flexible spatula and begin beating. Lower the heat a little and beat until you’ve got a dough that pulls away from the pan and leaves a film on the bottom (you might not get a film if your pan is nonstick), about 4 minutes.
Photos: Mary Dodd
Turn the dough out into the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, or into a large bowl that you can use with a hand mixer (or the spatula). Beat the dough for a minute or two, just so that it cools down a bit. Working on medium speed, add the eggs one at a time, beating for a minute after each egg goes in. You’ll have a smooth, shiny dough.
Note the middle picture - don't give up when you see this, keep going until it's smooth and shiny. Photos: Mary Dodd
Photo: Mary Dodd
The dough is ready to use and should be used soon. You can shape the dough and bake it immediately or shape it and freeze it.
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