Best Pate A Choux Dough 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.

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.

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.

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.

PATE A CHOUX (CREAM PUFF PASTRY)

Steps:

• Place a bowl on your mixer and fit the paddle attachment to it.
• Put your eggs next to the mixer.
• Mix the milk, water, butter, sugar and salt in a 2-quart saucepan.
• Bring to a full boil over medium heat, stirring occasionally with a wooden spoon.
• Stirring constantly, add the flour all at once, and stir quickly and without stopping until the flour is thoroughly incorporated.
• Then continue to cook and stir for another 45 seconds, or until the dough comes into a ball and a light film of paste coats the bottom of the pan.
• Immediately scrape the dough into the bowl of your mixer, and turn the mixer on low speed.
• Let it mix for a minute or two - the first few turns of the paddle will put up a cloud of steam.
• That's fine.
• Just let it mix until no more steam is coming off the dough.
• Then add the first egg, letting it mix in fully before adding the next one.
• Keep the mixer on low speed - you don't want to incorporate too much air into the paste.
• Scrape down the bowl every 2nd egg just to make sure everything is mixing together.
• Before adding the 6th egg, stop the mixer and check the consistency of the dough.
• You will know it is perfect if, when you lift the paddle, it pulls the dough with it, then the dough breaks away and forms a peak that slowly bends down.
• If the dough is too thick and doesn't form that peak, add the last egg.
• The dough is now ready to be used to make éclairs, cream puffs, profiteroles, or any other recipe calling for choux paste.
• It should be used immediately.
• NOTES FOR MAKING CHOUX PASTE SUCCESSFULLY: The liquid must be heated to a full boil.
• Add the flour all at once and stir madly until every last speck of flour is incorporated, then keep cooking and stirring some more - it's this last bit of cooking that will take the raw taste out of the flour; you'll know you are ready to quit when the dough forms a ball around your wooden spoon and the bottom of the pan is covered with a light film of paste.
• Stop mixing when you still have one egg left to add and inspect the dough.
• Depending on the condition of the flour, the room, or the moods of the pastry gods, the dough may or may not need the last egg.
• The dough is finished when you lift the paddle and it pulls up some dough that then detaches and forms a slowly bending peak - if you don't get a peak, add another egg.
• And relax.
• Even if you can't decide what to do, add the egg - you will still get a good puff.
• Use the paste while it is warm.
• It cannot be kept.
• Unfilled puffs or éclairs can be well wrapped and frozen for a few weeks.

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.