Module 3

2. Choux pastry truly is a little piece of
magic. It starts out as a small little ball
of dough, but turns into a light, airy and
fluffy hollow ball in the oven! It makes
delicious profiteroles, éclairs, cream puffs
and Bossche bollen (a speciality from the
South of the Netherlands).

3. What is choux pastry?
•Choux pastry is the dough that makes
profiteroles , but also those beautiful éclairs. The
main characteristic of choux pastry is that it
forms a very airy structure with large holes that
are ideal for introducing a filling into.
•Choux pastry itself is savoury and doesn’t have a
lot of flavour, it’s quite neutral, maybe a little
eggy. That’s why the filling tends to be the
element that makes a snack with choux pastry
really stand out.

4. Making choux pastry
Choux pastry is its own type of dough. It’s
probably most similar to hot water crust
pastry since both doughs require you to cook
the dough, before you put it into the oven.
The dough is then baked in the oven which is
when it puffs up.

5. Choux pastry is made of 4 ingredients, and
each of these has a clear role in the recipe:

6. •Water - The water is required to make a
flexible dough.
•Butter - The butter serves to give the dough
a richer feel and flavour. If no butter would
be added, the choux would have more of a
bread like consistency.

7. •Flour - The flour gives structure to the final bun.
•Egg - The reason eggs are added are various.
First of all, it adds extra moisture to the mixture
and makes it more flexible. It needs flexibility to
expand. Second of all, the proteins will form a
sturdy structure when heated, this will support
the airy shape of the profiteroles. Third, eggs
contain fat and prevent the puff from becoming
dry.

8. Step by Step
Procedure in Making
Choux Pastry

9. Step 1: Boiling butter & water
• You start by heating up the butter
and water for various reasons.
First of all, the butter has to melt,
else we won’t be able to mix it
through evenly, you might end up
with lumps of butter. Also, the
soft butter softens the overall
dough consistency. When it cools
down again, it will contribute to
its firmness. Second of all, we
need that heat to ‘cook’ the flour
in the next step.

10. • Most recipes call for bringing the water and butter to
the boil. The reason for doing so is that it helps
accelerate the next step. That said, you can still make
perfectly fine choux pastry if you just heat the two
enough for the butter to melt. You might need to stir a
little longer in step 2 because you have to make up for
that lost heat.

11. Step 2: Mixing flour with warm liquids
• Once the butter and water
are nice and warm, it’s time
to add the flour. Just about
all recipes say to add it all in
at once and stir quickly. you
should continue stirring until
the flour + water & butter
mixture form a nice ball. It
shouldn’t puddle and that
ball should still be soft and
flexible.

12. • During this step you accomplish an important step of
choux pastry making: you cook the flour. The starch in
the flour needs to gelatinize. When flour and hot water
are mixed the starch granules within the flour will
absorb water and ultimately swell and possibly
explode. This releases starch molecules and is what
thickens the mixture here. You need enough heat for
this to happen.

13. • This is very similar to what happens when using flour
to thicken the filling in a pie or when making a roux for
a bechamel sauce or for donuts.
• It is important not to stir the mixture for a lot longer
than after it has formed the ball like consistency. If you
continue stirring and heating the binding power of the
starch can go down (kind of what happens to some
more extreme in a dark roux). We did test heating and
mixing it for a little longer than necessary. It did turn a
little clumpy but the final profiteroles still turned out
fine. Showing that there’s some flexiblity.

14. Why not merge step 1 and 2?
• Technically, it is possible to add the butter, water and flour to a
pan and heat and stir them all together from the beginning.
For smaller quantities especially, your profiteroles can still
come out perfectly fine. However, it is a lot more of a hassle.
You need to be more careful not to get lumps or not to burn the
mixture.
• So why doesn’t the method really matter that much? Well, the
main purpose of this treatment is to melt the butter, heat the
flour, gelatinize the flour and form a thick paste. Whether you
do that by heating on the fire or preheating liquid doesn’t
really matter, as long as you mix everything homogeneously
and don’t burn anything. The science stays the same!

15. Why not merge step 1 and 2?

16. Forgetting the butter or water
So what will happen if you forget either the butter or the water?
In both cases, you’re up for a bit of a challenge, but there can be
ways to fix it.
• Forgetting the butter: This could give you a more chewy/firmer
pastry. By whisking the flour and water without the butter, you
run the risk of developing the gluten. Also, it’ll be hard to mix
in the butter homogeneously in the little flour ball that will
have formed. It’s probably best to start all over.
• Forgetting the water: This shouldn’t give you as much trouble,
the butter and flour will form a roux. As long as you remember
in time that you’ve forgotten the water, you can still add it and
thicken up the mixture.

17. Step 3: Adding the eggs
• Now that you’ve got your
ball of pastry, it’s time to
take a break and leave it
to cool down. You have to
cool it down before
adding the eggs, or you
run the risk of cooking
the eggs prematurely!

18. •Eggs contain proteins. These proteins will curdle
and set when the egg is heating. This is what
happens when boiling or frying an egg. You want
this curdling to happen once the eggs are in the
oven since it will help stabilize the final
profiterole. But you don’t want this to happen
prematurely or they won’t be able to flex and
stabilize the newly expanded structure anymore.

19. Step 4: Baking the profiteroles/choux pastry
• Now that the eggs have
been added, it’s time for
the final step: baking the
choux pastry. The choux
pastry is placed on trays
in either balls or longer
slivers, depending on
your final preferred
shape.

20. •During baking, the doughy, heavy pastry is
converted into a light and airy puff, as is shown
below. The dough is such that it is very flexible
but also contains a lot of water. Because the flour
has already firmed up during gelatinization it
won’t break but expand because of all the
evaporation of moisture inside the puff.

21. Prepared by : John Denver C. Begino
Joycen Ilao