Choux pastry (pâte à choux)

A recipe from cooking-ez.com

For 400 g, you will need:

• 1 60 ml Milk
• 2 60 ml water
• 3 60 g butter
• 4 75 g flour
• 5 110 g egg  ( How to... )
• 6 2 g fine (or table) salt
• 7 4 g caster sugar
• 8 100 g Craquelin (sweet cracker dough) (optional)
• Total weight: 375 grams

Times:

Preparation	Cooking	Start to finish
25 min.	45 min.	1 hour 4 min.

Step by step recipe

• 1: Preheat oven to 410°F (210°C).
  whisk
• 2: Pour 60 ml Milk and 60 ml water into a pan, add 60 g butter, 2 g fine (or table) salt and 4 g caster sugar.
• 3: Heat on medium heat until butter is completely melted.
• 4: Remove pan from heat, and 75 g flour.
• 5: Mix well with a spatula or a maryse, the choux dough will form a "ball".
• 6: Put pan on low heat, and stir dough for one minute to dry it.
• 7:

  By hand

  
  Pour the ball into a small bowl.
• 8: Pour beaten eggs step by step...
• 9: ...and whisk to mix.
• 10: Note:The more eggs you add, the more difficult the dough will be to mix. If you need to, you can use a spatula or a maryse instead of a whisk.
• 11: Your handmade choux pastry is ready.
• 12:

  With a mixer

  
  Pour the ball into the bowl of a mixer.
• 13: Start up at minimum speed.
• 14: Gently pour the eggs into the bowl of the mixer while it is moving, until completely incorporated.
• 15: Increase the speed of the mixer a little and continue beating for a minute or two to aerate the dough a little.
• 16: Your choux pastry mixer made is ready.
• 17:

  Dressing

  
  Place a sheet of parchment paper on a baking sheet.
  Pour the choux pastry into a piping bag.
• 18: Make choux with the forcing bag, in shape and size of your choice, here small round choux.
  Don't forget that dough will rise and spread during cooking, so choux must not be too close together.
• 19: If you're not easy with forcing bag, you may have unwanted small peaks on top of choux
• 20: In this case, flat the peak using a teaspoon soaked in milk...
• 21: ...to get a well rounded top.
• 22: Other solution, use craquelin (sweet cracker dough) which give a real professional look.
• 23:

  Cooking

  
  Put in the oven for about 30 minutes.
  Remove choux from the oven as soon as they are browned.
  Note: Don't open the oven door during cooking, because the drop in temperature will make your choux collapse.
  Leave to cool on a wire rack

Remarks

According to whether the choux pastry will be used for a sweet or savoury recipe, you can double the quantity of sugar or salt to accentuate the taste. For example: you want to make sweet cream puffs, make this recipe with 2 g salt and 5 g sugar, for salted cream puffs (with bechamel sauce for example) use 2 g sugar and 5 g salt.

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