choux pastry..

How to make Perfect Choux Pastry

So what do we know about choux pastry?

We know that it comes from France. It’s a light, airy, crispy pastry used to make eclairs, cream puffs/profiteroles (both sweet and savoury),  croquembouches, gougères, French crullers and more. Flour, eggs, butter and water are all you need to make it. And depending on who you ask, choux pastry is either super easy or insanely difficult to make. What’s up with that? Let’s find out.

Yes, I love puff pastry, shortcrust and filo (or phyllo), but choux pastry has always been my absolute favourite to make. And I find it pretty ingenious that choux pastry doesn’t use a chemical raising agent to rise. Instead it uses layers of air and moisture trapped in the dough to rise. I used to eat a lot of eclairs and cream puffs when I was little, so choux pastry has a special place in my heart. But when I also found out that I can make churros, gnocchi and so much other deliciousness using choux pastry, I was hooked for good. 

I had maintained for quite some time that I was a choux pastry whiz, until one time in the not so distant past, I just couldn’t get it right! And I couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong. So I started testing different ways of making it, until I finally understood what made it work for me. However if you do have a choux pastry recipe that works for you, stick with it. But it helps to understand WHY a recipe works, especially for troubleshooting purposes.

And another thing I will always maintain is that, if you need choux pastry, PLEASE make it yourself. The store-bought ones are dry and horrible. And tasteless. Homemade choux pastry however, is the real deal! Crisp on the outside and airy & custard-like on the inside. And when you know what’s happening, it really is super easy to make.

So let’s find out how to make PERFECT Choux Pastry every single time. I can’t fit everything into one post (it’s long enough as it is), so I will only cover the basics here, and expand on it later.

What is PERFECT choux pastry?

A pastry with a light and crisp outer shell, and a delicious, soft, creamy, custard-like inside. And it’s airy with large air pockets inside as well. A few cracks will be visible on the outside, but it still retains the shape it was piped in.

Choux Pastry shell is flat, too soft and soggy – usually due to a runny dough.

Choux Pastry shell has risen irregularly, with lots of cracks and kind of looks like a flower – due to rapid expansion.

Choux Pastry shell is too dry – baked too long.

Now let’s see why these things happen.

Choux pastry shell is flat, soft and soggy.

One confession I’d like to make here is that I actually LIKE these. I love the soft shells that seem even more “custardy” on the inside, although I’m not a fan of the flatness. This is not how we want to impress people now is it? 

Chances are the dough is too wet and runny. When you pipe out the batter, it probably didn’t hold its shape (see the picture above – the runny batter kind of spreads out). That means it has too little flour, or too much liquid in the form of water, eggs and/or butter. So it doesn’t rise as much, and the little that they rise will deflate when they come out of the oven.

What to do if choux pastry is too runny? 

I’m glad you asked. Whatever you do, NEVER ADD EXTRA FLOUR! NEVER! Repeat after me – I will never add raw flour to a runny choux pastry dough.

So then what? Make another half batch of the dough with water, salt, butter and flour (no eggs!). Once you have made that part of the dough, and it has cooled down, add it to the runny dough a bit at a time, mixing it into the dough well, until you get a pipeable consistency. It might not be perfect, but once you fill it and drizzle chocolate over it, you can get away with it 

OR – throw it out, and start over. I usually do this.

Also, if you remove them from the oven too early, the shell will not rise properly and even if they do rise, due to too much moisture inside the shell, they will start to deflate when they cool down.

Choux Pastry shell has risen irregularly, with lots of cracks and looks like a flower.

So you pipe it nice and smooth, but when it comes out of the oven, it looks all kinds of weird.

Chances are, there’s stuff in your pastry batter that shouldn’t be in there. Things like flour that has not been sifted or salt that was not melted. This can interfere with the smoothness of the pastry. So sift the flour! If you can, triple sift it. The lighter the flour, the less it would form clumps. And add the salt (and the sugar) when you’re heating the water, so that they completely dissolve.

Also the addition of completely dissolved salt apparently helps prevent cracks from being formed on the shell, although I’m not sure why. I didn’t test it without salt to see if that’s indeed the case. You’re supposed to add a bit of salt to the dough anyway, so there’s really no reason to go without salt.

Many recipes call for choux pastry to be baked at two different temperatures. First at a higher temperature for a few minutes, and then finish off at a lower temperature. The reasoning behind this is that the higher temp. facilitates the rise of the pastry because the high heat causes the water to evaporate faster, thereby raising the pastry faster and higher. Then the temperature is lowered and the pastry is allowed to dry out and bake properly.

choux pastry

Now here’s what gives me the most consistent results for Choux pastry. 

Michael Ruhlman’s ratio by weight for choux pastry is 2:1:1:2 of water, butter, flour and eggs. While this works well, I found that adding a little extra flour (when using AP flour) helps make the choux pastry that much more crisp – a very desirable result.

Whenever you can, ALWAYS measure ingredients by weight, not by volume. This is true for any kind of baking. While I don’t have a problem measuring by volume for some recipes, I always prefer to use weight because that gives more consistent results. Here is my favorite kitchen scale that is reliable and affordable!

When you add flour to the boiling butter-water mix, you need to mix in the flour well (flour needs to absorb all the moisture of the butter-water mix) and then cook it further on the stove so that enough moisture evaporates so you get a good dough. A lot of recipes will talk about the dough leaving the sides of the pan when you’re mixing it, or looking like mashed potatoes or leaving droplets of oil on the surface, as signs that indicate a good dough.

Apart from all that here’s what I look for. When I mix in the flour, it forms a ball and leaves droplets of oil on the surface of the pan as I mix the dough. Additionally, if I were to stick a spoon in the dough it’ll stick and stay upright in the dough as shown in the picture below. If the spoon doesn’t stay up like that, that means there’s still too much liquid/moisture in the dough. This is what I call the “spoon test”.

The amount of eggs added is variable. Usually it’s 4 eggs for 8 oz of water (because 1 egg is considered 2 oz, but that depends on the size of it).

Only add 1 egg – that’s lightly beaten – at a time, and mix it in well before you add the next. The reason you should lightly beat the egg before you add it is that, if you realize half way through adding that lightly beaten egg that adding more would make the dough too runny, you can easily stop yourself from adding the rest of the egg. Because what you’re looking for is a dough that’s glossy, still thick and pipeable. Sometimes I only need to add 3 eggs and a bit before I get the right consistency and if I added all of that 4th egg, my dough would lose that stiffness I need. If that happens, the dough won’t hold its shape when piped, leading to flat choux pastry. Not good.

If you are piping the dough, make sure the tip is just touching the surface and then move up as you go. This will help create less ripples and folds. Alternatively, you can use a spoon to spoon it on to a baking sheet (like I did for this post), which some bakers prefer to do. Remember to use a damp finger to flatten the apex or any points, otherwise these points will burn when you bake the choux pastry.

I use either the Wilton 1A Round Tip or Wilton 2A Round Tip for my profiterole pastries and I LOVE my 16 inch disposable pastry bags because they are sturdy, and hold more of the dough!

And another trick I use to get the choux pastry shells to expand even more is to spray the baking tray with some water! It’s simple, yet it works brilliantly. As the water on the baking tray evaporates from around the dough, it helps “raise” the dough from the outside while the moisture IN the dough, helps raise it from the inside.

So just a light spray of water on the baking sheet gives the dough a little extra boost – especially if you use extra flour. Probably because extra flour = extra gluten = so more rise. I will test this theory out at a later date. 

When the choux pastry comes out of the oven (after it has been baked to a nice golden brown, crisp shell), use a toothpick to pierce each shell. This lets out any moisture trapped inside, without causing the shell to collapse.

TO FILL THE CHOUX PASTRY SHELLS – There are many fillings that you can use to fill profiteroles or eclairs! The most popular filling is Vanilla pastry cream, which is also known as Creme Patissiere. You can get the recipe to make Creme Parissiere here!