Choux Pastry

Choux pastry is a light pastry dough used to make profiteroles, croquembouches, eclairs, French crullers, beignets, St. Honore cake, Indonesian kue sus, and gougeres.

Choux pastry contains only butter, water, flour and eggs.

Instead of a raising agent it employs high moisture content to create steam during cooking to puff the pastry.

Choux pastry is usually baked, but for beignets it is fried. 

In Spain and Latina America churros are made of fried choux pastry, sugared and dipped in a thin chocolate usually served for breakfast.
In Austrian cuisine it is also boiled to make Marillenknodel, a sweet apricot dumpling; in that case it does not puff, but remains relatively dense.


INGREDIENTS

250ml water
100g unsalted butter
125g strong flour, sieved
4 whole eggs, beaten
pinch of salt
pinch of sugar



METHOD

1. Boil the water in a saucepan and add the butter cut up into small pieces.
2. Once the butter has melted, take the water off the heat and add in the flour, salt and sugar.
3. Mix all together and put back on the hob.
4. Keep on mixing for about 5 minutes or until the water has almost all evaporated.
5. Transfer the mixture into a bowl and stir to let some of the steam escape.
6. Add the whisked eggs gradually to the mix taking care not to add to much at a time (make sure the mix is not too runny - you may not need to use all the eggs).
7. The choux pastry is now ready to use.

Due to the soft consistency of the mixture, choux pastry is always piped with piping bags.



POSSIBLE FAULTS IN CHOUX PASTE ARE:

• greasy and heavy: 
• because the mix is over-cooked

• soft and not aerated: 
• because the flour is insufficiently cooked
• the eggs are insufficiently beaten in the mix
• the oven is too cool
• it's under baked