Pate A Choux
I have already posted once about éclairs. But those didn’t turn out so well. They were thin, most of them fell after taking them out of the oven, and they tasted very eggy, a taste that neither Tommy or I like. I tried them one more time after that and got the same result.
When I saw that pate a choux (the dough that is used to make eclairs) were on the syllabus for the baking class that I took this past semester, I got very excited. I was hoping that I would be taught the right way to make the batter, and hopefully learn what I was doing wrong the few times before trying to make eclairs. The biggest problem seemed to be that they always deflated after taking them out of the oven, no matter how long I baked them.
After learning how to make pate a choux in class, I think the three things that I was doing wrong were:
- Adding the eggs too quickly, and probably too many. I was unsure how to tell when I had enough eggs but not too much, as this was always stressed in the recipes/instructions that I read as being a critical element.
- Using the wrong recipe. I’m sure if I went back and tried the recipe I was using, I’d have success (especially now that I know how to tell when I’ve added enough egg). But this combination and quantity of ingredients worked for me, so that’s what I’ll stick with.
- Piping wrong. Probably not wrong, but I like the short/fat eclairs more than the long skinny ones, and I didn’t know how to pipe them fat.
I also learned that I don’t need to mix in the eggs with a mixer, as most of the recipes on the internet instruct you to do. Stirring in the eggs doesn’t require THAT much effort without a mixer… at least I don’t think so. Plus it makes it a one-pot recipe instead of a 2-pot + 1 paddle recipe.
So here is the recipe that seems to work for me. My teacher told me that you can use water or milk, but I used milk and that’s what I will stick with. Milk causes the pate a choux to brown faster and darker than using water, and the milk will also keep the pate a choux on the soft side after it has baked and cooled. If you want crisper eclairs, then use the water. Also, you can use butter or vegetable oil for the fat, but our class used vegetable oil because it is cheaper. So again, the oil worked so that’s what I’ll use forever.
Pate a choux
Ingredients
8 oz milk
4 oz vegetable or canola oil
1/2 tsp salt
5 1/2 oz bread flour
8 oz eggs (4 large eggs) – beaten
Preparation
Add the milk, oil and salt in a sauce pan and bring to a simmer. As soon as it starts to simmer, add the flour all at once. While still on the heat, stir in the flour with a wooden spoon. The dough will form a ball and will look a little like play-do. Continue to stir on the heat until a light film on the bottom of the pan forms. This will only take 2-3 minutes from the time you add the flour. Remove from the heat and cool the mixture for about a minute (so that the eggs do not cook when you begin to add them).
Still using the wooden spoon, add the eggs one by one. After each egg addition, the dough will become runny at first, but continuous stirring with the wooden spoon will eventually cause the batter to come back together. Once this happens, you can add the next egg. When you get close to the end, add eggs by the 1/2 egg portion so that you don’t add too much egg. The dough is ready when you put a small glob between your pointer finger and thumb and pull your fingers apart. The dough should stay together until your fingers are about an inch apart. If the dough does not stick together, add more eggs. I’m not sure what it looks like if you add too many eggs, I think that it is just really runny.
Put the dough into a piping bag and pipe into the shape of your choice. To pipe them fat, you have to begin squeezing out the dough while not moving the bag. The dough will begin to spread out width-wise, at which point you can very slowly start to move the piping bag along the length. The first few times I did this, my hand was shaky and I ended up with little ridges along the length of my dough, but the ridges went away during the baking process. When you finish piping an eclair, you will be left with a not-so-smooth part at the end. If you bake it like this, it will turn into a very sharp point. After piping out all of the eclairs, dip your finger in water and pat down the rough ends to smooth them out before baking.
And if you mess up, you can scrap the dough up and put it back into the bowl, and then back into the piping bag for a second chance.