Cream Puff Pastry Dough (Pâte a Choux)

by: Debbi

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Cream puff pastry dough, commonly known as choux pastry is made by beating eggs, one by one, into a cooked paste - called a panade - of flour, water, and butter. Cream puff pastry dough is used to make éclairs, cream puffs, profiteroles, and little cheese puffs called gougeres. The techniques for making each of these are virtually the same; only the size and fillings differ. Eclairs are filled with pastry cream and coated with fondant; cream puffs are filled with sweetened whipped cream; and profiteroles are filled with ice cream (chocolate sauce is poured over them at the last minute). Cheese puffs have no filling - their flavoring, cheese, is combined with the uncooked pastry before baking. It's hard to go wrong with cream puff pastry dough, but remember to slice the butter so it melts quickly when you heat it with water. If you add it in one big chunk, it will take too long to melt and too much of the water will evaporate, throwing off your proportions. As you cook the panade, continue stirring with a wooden spoon so the dough holds together in a single mass and leaves a film of cooked flour adhering to the bottom and sides of the saucepan. This process usually takes only about 5 minutes and ensures that you’ve forced as much water out of the mixture as possible, meaning that you can add more egg - and the more egg, the lighter the finished baked pastry will be. Keep in mind that the exact number of eggs you use depends on the flour. Don't just add all the eggs called for in the recipe without checking the consistency of the mixture. You've added enough eggs when a groove made in the top of the dough slowly folds in on itself and when the dough droops from a wooden spoon.