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In the game of pâte à choux, the classical method wins
• by Julia M. Usher • Photo by Steve adams studio, food styling by Julia M. Usher
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I’ve often wondered why pâte à choux sits on the bench while puff pastry plays first string in most bakers’ lineups. After all, pâte à choux (pronounced paht-a-shoo) rises just as impressively and with substantially less work.
Equally inexplicable is this pastry’s lack of recognition for anything other than cream puffs and éclairs. Yet it makes a delightful appetizer when filled with a savory mousse or spread. You can also press it through a pastry bag and boil small pieces into gnocchi. Or add Gruyère cheese and bake it in a big ring to create the classic Burgundian bread gougère.
Ever since discovering these virtues in culinary school, I’ve been as devoted to a particular method as to the pastry itself. For years, I’ve used an adaptation of the recipe in Madeleine Kamman’s The Making of a Cook for the simple reason that it consistently delivers airy and delicate puffs. Well, there’s that reason and the fact that I’ve never met a credible challenger . . . until recently, that is.
Leave it to Shirley Corriher, the mad food scientist of Food Network fame, to throw a crazy curveball of a recipe into her book CookWise. Her recipe claims bigger, better and drier puffs, and dismisses traditional methods, such as Kamman’s, as yielding only “ordinary” results. More of a good thing is always fine by me, but the promise of no gooey insides was the real kicker. You see, the only part of Kamman’s method that I don’t like is the removal of soft dough, occasionally required when large puffs don’t bake through to the center by the time they’re done on the outside. Corriher’s recipe might be all hype, but I’d never know unless it squared off with Kamman’s in a kitchen test.
Corriher and Kamman begin their recipes in perfect agreement. They combine the water, butter and salt in a saucepan and bring the mixture to a full boil. Then, and only then, do they add the flour – not gradually, but all at once. Corriher explains that rapid immersion in very hot water is the only way to ensure that all the starch in the flour instantly swells. More swelling means more water absorption and thicker dough, which in turn means that more eggs can be added later. Since eggs are the primary leavening agent – the ingredient that leads to light, hollow puffs – adding the flour the right way is not an inconsequential step. Even though Corriher uses ¼ cup less water to every cup of flour and bread flour instead of all-purpose flour, both recipes look like the same batch of mashed potatoes at this point. From all outward appearances, the game is tied.
Here’s where the methods diverge. Kamman insists on recooking the mash on the stovetop to remove excess moisture. Her logic is as before: the drier the dough, the more eggs she can incorporate in the next step. Corriher skips the stovetop recooking altogether, possibly because she uses less water in the initial mix. Again, the recipes look nearly identical, so rather than dwell on Corriher’s omission, I turn to the eggs.
While Kamman beats in four to five whole eggs, Corriher uses more whites than whole eggs, asserting that whites have a superior drying effect. Substitute three whites for three whole eggs, and you won’t end up with gooey insides, she says. Ahh, so that’s her trick. I pop the authors’ puffs in two different ovens, eager to see if the whites will work their magic as Corriher has promised.
A mere 10 minutes later, I smell the acrid odor of burning butter and flour emanating from the Corriher oven. Strike one for the food scientist: She bakes her puffs in the bottom third of a “rising” oven (preheated to 300 degrees but turned to 450 degrees when the puffs go in). Sadly, but not surprisingly, her pâte à choux scorches on the bottom before it ever inflates. Meanwhile, sitting on the middle rack at an even 400 degrees, the Kamman puffs are gorgeous, having already expanded to nearly triple their original size.
When I break open one of the Corriher puffs, I am further dismayed. Strikes two and three: the outer shell is dense and rubbery and the inside is wet. So much for Corriher’s theory on whites. Perhaps if she hadn’t dismissed the stovetop drying step, her puffs wouldn’t be so damp? As for the puffs’ likeness to hockey pucks, Corriher had a plausible rationale for using bread flour at the start. (“Dough puffs much better when there are strong elastic sheets of gluten to hold in the steam.”) But given that beating is widely known to activate gluten and toughen dough, you’d think she’d have been more cautious before making a wholesale high-protein (high-gluten) flour switch.
I try several variations of Corriher’s recipe after this initial match, and the closest I come to Kamman’s quality is with a version using all-purpose flour and egg whites, baked in the middle of the oven. Though this dough swells nicely without burning, it lacks the rich color and flavor that are the hallmark of whole eggs. Call me a diehard fan if you must, but, to me, the outcome of this contest is clear: Some things, especially good things, are better left untouched.
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Basic Savory or Sweet Pâte À Choux
About 5 dozen 1 1/2- to 1 3/4-inch appetizer-size puffs
Adapted from the pâte à choux recipe in Madeleine Kamman’s The Making of a Cook, this basic formulation can be used with both sweet and savory fillings.
1 cup water
½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
½ to 3∕4 tsp. table salt (Use the lesser amount of salt if you’re planning a sweet filling.)
1 cup all-purpose flour, sifted
4 large eggs
For the egg wash:
1 large egg yolk
3 Tbsp. milk
• Place a rack in the middle of the oven and preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Generously butter one or more 15-by-10-inch cookie sheets and then rinse them under cold water. Shake off any excess water. (Rinsing will keep the puff bottoms from scorching.)
• Combine 1 cup water with the butter pieces and salt in a medium (3-quart) saucepan. Place over medium to medium-high heat and slowly bring to a rolling boil.
• Remove from the heat and quickly add the flour all at once, stirring well with a wooden spoon to keep the mixture lump-free.
• Return the pan to medium heat and dry the paste by stirring and smearing it along the bottom of the pan with the spoon. The drying process may take as long as 7 to 10 minutes, so be patient and stir constantly to keep the paste from scorching. When dried to the proper degree, the paste should cling together in a thick mass and have a slight sheen from melted butter on the surface.
• Remove from the heat, cool slightly and beat in the eggs, 1 at a time. Stir vigorously to avoid cooking the eggs upon contact with the hot paste. To keep the mixture thick, only incorporate the next egg after the previous one has been uniformly absorbed by the paste.
• Turn the filling into a pastry bag fitted with a ½-inch round tip and pipe 1- to 1¼-inch mounds, about 2 inches apart, on the prepared cookie sheet(s). (Alternatively, use a spoon to portion the paste.)
• For the egg wash: Whisk together the egg yolk and milk. Carefully brush a small amount on top of each puff, taking care to smooth out any peaks in the dough and to avoid dripping onto the pan. (Drips will cook onto the dough and pan, and may prevent the puff from rising.)
• Bake 20 to 25 minutes for small cocktail puffs (or 5 minutes more for larger puffs). Pierce the sides of each puff with a small skewer in the last 5 to 10 minutes of baking to dry the insides as thoroughly as possible. (If the puffs seem to be getting too brown, you can drop the temperature to 350 to 375 degrees to dry even longer.)
• Let the puffs cool completely on racks. Split with a sharp knife and remove any soft dough from the inside before filling.
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