Culinary recipes and photo recipes

How to make choux pastry at home? - Recipe with photo:

We take a saucepan or just a small saucepan with a thick bottom and pour milk and water into it. To the resulting mixture, add butter (it is better to cut it into small pieces beforehand, so it will melt faster), as well as a pinch of salt and sugar.

We put the saucepan on a small fire and, stirring the mixture from time to time, we make sure that the butter is completely melted. Bring the resulting solution to a boil.

In the meantime, the mixture is boiling, be sure to get rid of possible lumps and impurities, sift 150 g of flour.

Pour all the sifted flour into the boiling oil solution.

Without removing the saucepan from the heat, actively mix the mass with a wooden spoon or spatula. We mix the mass until all the flour is brewed and we have a homogeneous lump of dough that will lag behind the walls of the saucepan.

We shift the resulting lump of dough into a container in which we will knead the choux pastry for eclairs and slightly knead it with a spoon, making sure that the dough cools to warm.

As soon as it cools down (we check the temperature by touch - the custard dough should be warm, but not burned), add eggs to it. First, one at a time, introduce 3 whole chicken eggs. After each new egg, stir the dough very carefully until completely homogeneous.

First, break the last fourth egg into a small bowl and lightly beat it with a fork. And already in this form we mix in small portions into the custard dough. It is necessary to do this in order not to be mistaken with the consistency of the dough, since flour can be of different strengths, and eggs can also differ quite a lot in their weight. Therefore, you may not need a whole egg, but only half, or vice versa, if your eggs are small, then in order to make custard dough at home, you may need 5 or even 6 eggs. Therefore, you need to focus on the consistency of the dough! By the way, if you went too far with the number of eggs, and the dough turned out to be very liquid, in no case do not add “raw” flour, this will only spoil the dough. The only way to save such a dough is to re-prepare the custard base and thicken the batter with it!

The correct choux pastry for eclairs turns out to be smooth, shiny, moderately thick, and it flows from a spoon with a heavy wide ribbon. Well, that's all, our custard dough at home is ready.

We shift it into a pastry bag or syringe, and if neither is available, then we use a tight bag or a brand new stationery file with a cut off corner.

Depending on the idea, we form eclairs, profiteroles or rings from the dough. Just do not forget that during baking, choux pastry products increase quite a lot, so be sure to leave 4-5 cm of free space between them.

We bake products from choux pastry first at 200 C for 15 minutes (during this time the dough should rise and begin to blush slightly), after which we reduce the temperature to 160 C and dry the eclairs / profiteroles for another 20-25 minutes until they are completely ready. Baking time may vary slightly depending on the specifics of your particular oven and, of course, the size of the products. During baking, we do not expose the product to a sharp temperature drop, especially the first 20-25 minutes, as this can cause the eclairs to fall off. And it is also very important to completely bake the eclairs inside, because otherwise, after baking, they will also fall off and lose their appearance. As soon as the eclairs / profiteroles are ready, turn off the heat and slightly open the oven door, in this form let the cakes cool to warm (this is not necessary, but if suddenly you haven’t baked the custards a little, then this cooling method will help you cook them) .

Completely cooled eclairs / profiteroles fill with your favorite cream. In addition to the sweet option, eclairs can also be filled with savory fillings, such as pâtés, mousses or even salads. Serve filled eclairs to the table, preferably as soon as possible. We hope that our recipe with a photo gave you an exhaustive answer to the question of how to make choux pastry at home!