Choux Shine - Recap

Alton, as a train engineer aboard the Great Smokey Mountain Railway in Dillsboro, North Carolina (USA) suggests that physicists, industrialists and historians would likely all agree on the most influential physical force – steam. Water transformed to steam by heat increases in volume 1600 times. If there is no room for expansion that steam will be under pressure, and if that pressure can be harnessed that steam can do work, converting heat energy to kinetic energy. Or, it can make a light pastry called pâte à choux. Pâte à choux starts as choux paste, then expands and sets when baked. The resulting cavernous middle can be filled with all manner of sweet or savory things, all of which are... Good Eats.

At Harry’s Whole Foods in Atlanta, Georgia (USA) Alton explains with a piece of bread: most doughs are designed to rise with a lot of small bubbles. But pâte à choux is designed to rise with one or two large bubbles. Like most foods, its creation is part process and part ingredients list. The ingredients are simple: flour, butter, water and eggs. Any sort of water and butter generally work, and eggs need only be grade A large. The flour, though, must contain a lot of protein. Alton selects bread flour, specifically the kind made for bread machines, as this has the highest protein content of any flour. Alton also grabs a bag of chocolate chips, some vegetable oil and some vanilla pudding mix.

Back in the kitchen Alton puts water and butter into a pan. He’ll be making sweet puffs so he’ll add a little sugar and just a pinch of salt. All this goes in a pot bigger than he’ll need because the dough must be worked. Unless you want choux on your shoes, use a large pot! Alton next weights his flour, which requires... a scale. It’s off to the store.

At Linens ‘N Things in Atlanta, George (USA), Alton spars with the redoubtable W, first asking her why scales have such a wide price range. She tells him the instruments come in three basic sorts, which gives Alton an idea.

Moments later, atop the roof, Alton uses a seesaw to demonstrate the balance scale. This simple scale balances a known weight against an unknown weight using a level on a fulcrum; because it exploits simple physics it’s always accurate and never wears out, but it’s big and clunky and sometimes hard to read. Spring scales measure the force necessary to deform a spring. They’re more compact and often easier to read, but springs don’t exhibit a linear response to force over their entire deformation length, so this type of scale is less accurate. Springs also wear out, given time, and they bounce, making them hard to calibrate. Alton recommends the final variety: digital scales. These employ a tiny electrical current that passes through a sensor under the weighing platform. Weight on the platform compresses the sensor and alters the electrical current; circuitry in the scale interprets this for the operator.

Back inside the store Alton selects a scale with an eleven pound capacity and a tare button. A tare button allows the operator to zero the scale with a weight on it, such as a plate, permitting food to be weighed inside dishes. Alton also recommends flatter scales that are easier to store in drawers.

Back in the kitchen Alton’s butter has melted into the water and the water is boiling. He dumps in all the flour at once – it will foam – and stirs vigorously to combine it. As the ingredients come together he reduces the heat and keeps working the dough. The heat will drive any unabsorbed water off; the dough is ready when it is no longer sticky and there is a slight residue on the pan. Alton kills the heat and moves the dough to his mixer’s work bowl. Drier is better here; a drier dough will absorb more eggs. Alton lets the dough cool five minutes or so. Adding eggs while the dough is hot will simply scramble them.

As the dough cools, Alton explains his belief that the name pâte à choux perhaps originated as pâte à chaud, or “hot paste” although not everyone agrees. Because this dough cooks before it bakes it can do some wonderful things.

Outside, Alton fills a bucket with water to represent a loose dough and pitches it over the patio – a watery mess. But boiling water causes flour to gelatinize – Alton demonstrates with a handful of dried sponges that he tosses in a refilled bucket. These sponges soak up a lot of water and mostly fill the bucket. They represent a thick batter that a cook can mold, but that is still jammed full of water.

Back inside Alton prepares a mixture of whole eggs and egg whites. He’ll work as much of this in as he can. The eggs emulsifying power holds butter and flour together. The protein from the whites contributes structural integrity (the reason for extra egg whites). Finally, the egg whites contain drying agents that will permit water to exit but not allow it back in. Alton mixes the dough to the correct consistency. Digging into it with the beater, he holds up the beater and shows how the dough falls off in “vee” shape. The dough could be piped immediately or covered for up to a few hours.

Alton disdains a traditional piping bag as a difficult to clean unitasker. Instead he cuts the corner from a gallon sized zip top bad and fits it with a piping tip, then turns it inside out to load it. Setting the oven to 375º, Alton pulls a standard aluminum half-sheet and uses four dots of dough to “glue” a piece of parchment to it. Then he makes a series of “lazy S” shapes, working quickly and ensuring even sizing. Using warm water and a gentle finger, he bats down the “points” that mark the end of each piping. That goes straight to the oven on the middle rack, and Alton increases the temperature to 425º to ensure good bottom heat during the first half of the cooking and sets the timer for fifteen minutes.

Cream puffs use the same dough as éclairs but they must use a different pan because they’re a different size and therefore require a different baking time. They start as concentric circles. Alton again uses warm water and a gentle finger press to pat down the points at the ends.

When the timer sounds Alton turns the heat to 350º and lets the pastries dry for ten minutes. When they’re cool enough to handle he pierces an end with the tip of a knife to let moisture out. Once they cool to room temperature they can be stored for as long as a week, or frozen for up to a month. Alton saws one of his puffs in half; inside is a single large chamber, emptu as a cave.

Traditionally a pastry cream stabilized with starch fills these. Alton suggests instead ordinary vanilla pudding mix with ¾ as much liquid as called for; this thick paste goes into another gallon zip top bad fitted with a star piping tip. The tip helps make a hole; Alton squeezes pudding in gently until it comes out the hole. When that’s done he melts chocolate chips and a little oil over water (being careful to keep the water out of the chocolate to prevent it from seizing). He chills the filled éclairs and then demonstrates two methods of icing them: inverting them and dipping them in the bowl, or filling a squeeze bottle and “going Jackson Pollock” on them.

The right way to eat an éclair is to put the end with the hole into the mouth so the pressure of the bite doesn’t shoot cream out. Alton also demonstrates how sweet cream puffs can be used to craft ice cream sandwiches and savory puffs can be filled with chicken salad.

Finally, Alton shows that this batter can be piped directly into hot oil (he uses a #12 piping tip) and cooked into that carnival wonder, funnel cake. He flips the dough once during the cooking process and removes it to a cooling rack where he dusts it with powdered sugar.

Despite the fussy name, pâte à choux is easy to make, versatile and delicious, fun to make and eat and certainly good eats.

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