How to prepare dough for custard. Choux pastry and eclair recipe

What are your favorite pastries from childhood? I am sure that the majority will answer: eclairs! Of course, who doesn't like light, crispy cakes with a delicate cream inside, covered with a shiny icing? Yummy, and more!

Eclairs are French pastries that have been widely known throughout the world since the late nineteenth century. They are elongated choux pastry pies with a light cream inside.

Ideal eclairs should be smooth, even and uniform, 10 to 14 cm long.

Many do not dare to cook them at home, but prefer to buy ready-made in the store. It seems that such a delicious dessert and the recipe should be complex, multi-stage, with a long list of ingredients. In reality, however, it turns out to be just the opposite.

The ingredients are very affordable, which can be found in any refrigerator, and the cooking method is quite simple if you follow the instructions clearly. Believe in yourself and be sure to try to cook. I think that the result will exceed all your expectations!

The main rules for preparing dough for eclairs

Proper eclairs are made only from choux pastry. What is it really? The basic principle is that a mixture of flour with butter and water is “brewed” and then, after cooling slightly, the eggs are added. The result is a sticky, thick dough that does not spread, so to speak, keeps its shape.

The increase in dough volume occurs due to the formation of steam inside the eclairs during baking at high temperatures.

Proper cakes do not tear, because they are made only from dense, durable dough.

Classic recipe

Ingredients:

  • water - 250 ml;
  • butter - 100 g;
  • flour - 200 g;
  • eggs - 4 pieces;
  • salt.

Cooking time: 70 min.

Calories per 100 grams: 204 kcal.

Recipe for choux pastry for eclairs step by step:


Choux pastry for eclairs: a recipe according to GOST step by step

The recipe is for 20 cakes. Please note that water for cooking must be measured in grams, and not, as usual, in milliliters.

Ingredients:

  • wheat flour - 200 g;
  • large chicken eggs- 5 pieces. (or 6 pieces of medium size);
  • butter - 100 g;
  • pure water - 180 g;
  • table salt - a pinch.

Cooking time: 1 hour 10 min.

Calories per 100 grams: 210 kcal.

How to cook:

  1. In a saucepan, bring to a boil a mixture of chopped butter, water and salt;
  2. Sift the flour carefully. It is desirable a couple of times so that the pastries turn out to be airy and lush;
  3. Pour the flour into the pan and mix thoroughly with a spoon or culinary spatula;
  4. The dough will begin to brew and stick together in one lump. Let it brew well, continuing to stir quickly right on the burner;
  5. Transfer to a bowl and let cool;
  6. Beat eggs in a separate bowl;
  7. Add them gradually to the dough, gently kneading it with a spatula or using a mixer;
  8. Line a baking sheet with cooking paper;
  9. Using a culinary bag or a regular plastic bag, squeeze the dough onto a baking sheet in the form of sticks about 12 cm long and 18 mm in diameter (it can also be in the form of circles, then you will get round eclairs-balls);
  10. Bake in a preheated oven, first 10 minutes at 220°C, then another 25 minutes at 180°C;
  11. Prepare your favorite cream and fondant, fill and decorate eclairs according to your own preferences.

How to cook lean custard dough for eclairs

If you adhere to a vegetarian diet and exclude animal fats from your diet, then this is not a reason to deny yourself such wonderful and delicious desserts like eclairs.

The following recipe is just for you: it does not contain eggs, milk and butter!

Ingredients:

  • 2 stack flour;
  • 2 table. tablespoons of vegetable oil;
  • 1 stack boiling water;
  • salt.

Cooking time: 65 minutes.

Calories per 100 grams: 198 kcal.

How to cook:

  1. Mix flour with salt, fold it into a slide and make a recess in the middle;
  2. Pour boiling water and vegetable oil into the center of the deepening;
  3. Mix the dough slightly and leave to cool until warm;
  4. Now you can knead it with your hands until a homogeneous consistency, it will take about 10 minutes;
  5. Let the dough rest for 25 minutes;
  6. Knead lightly again for a couple of minutes;
  7. Everything, lean dough for eclairs is ready, you can sculpt cakes from it and bake them as usual.

How to make choux pastry for eclairs with milk and dry yeast

Choux pastry does not tolerate experiments with the composition and preparation steps. However, you can try to cook another version of it, time-tested. Here the water will be replaced by milk and dry yeast, and the result is almost better.

Keep in mind when you start directly baking that milk gives products a darker color.

Therefore, make sure that the ruddy color of the eclairs does not confuse you, and they are well baked.

Ingredients:

  • 200 g of premium flour;
  • 200 g cow's milk;
  • 4 medium chicken eggs;
  • 70 g plums. oils;
  • 10 g dry yeast;
  • 20 ml of water;
  • salt and sugar - a pinch each.

Cooking time: 2 hours.

Calories per 100 grams: 285 kcal.

How to cook:

  1. Boil the milk and pour the sifted flour into it;
  2. Beat the resulting mixture with a mixer until a homogeneous consistency;
  3. Butter melt;
  4. Dissolve dry yeast in warm water and mix it with sugar, add to the custard mass;
  5. Beat the eggs thoroughly until a dense foam forms;
  6. Eggs should be poured in a little bit to the main dough, constantly stirring;
  7. Salt, add oil and mix again until a viscous state of fatty sour cream;
  8. It is better to let the dough rise for one hour, then form sticks out of it and bake for 30 minutes in a hot oven at 200 ° C.

How to form and what to bake eclairs from choux pastry

Eclairs are easiest to shape using a pastry bag. You can use a variety of nozzles, especially beautiful eclairs are obtained using nozzles "round" or "open star", with a diameter of 10-12 mm.

There is a little trick on how to quickly fill such a bag: you need to put it in a tall glass, and straighten the edges. Then the dough will fill it evenly, without voids, and you will not stain anything.

If you don't have a pastry bag yet, you can use a regular plastic bag by cutting off one of the corners of the desired diameter. This method is less convenient, but economical.

Eclairs are deposited on a baking sheet covered with cooking paper in a checkerboard pattern, obliquely, diagonally. The preferred length is 10-14 cm. Try to leave a sufficient distance between them, at least 3 cm, because they will increase in size during baking.

To make the eclairs the same size, you can make some kind of marks on the baking sheet for your convenience using a ruler and flour.

The best fillings for custard cakes: recipes

There is a great variety of fillings and creams for filling eclairs. The most common options are vanilla, coffee and chocolate, the most unusual ones are caramel, pistachio, coconut. But everyone has the right to choose their favorite, especially since there is where to turn around!

Eclairs are filled with cream using a pastry syringe.

If you don’t have one, you can simply cut the cake carefully from the edge and put the filling in with a spoon.

Classic custard

Ingredients:

  • 400 ml of milk;
  • 150 g plums. oils;
  • 2 table. l. Sahara;
  • 1 ½ table. l. flour;
  • 2 whole eggs and 1 yolk;
  • 1 table. l. powdered sugar.

Cooking time: 40 min.

Calories per 100 grams: 215 kcal.

How to cook:

  1. Add sugar to milk and bring to a boil. Check that the sugar is completely dissolved;
  2. Allow the resulting mixture to cool slightly;
  3. Mix the flour with all the eggs and powdered sugar, add to the sugar-milk mixture;
  4. Put on fire and stir;
  5. Cook until the cream thickens. Make sure that it does not boil at the same time;
  6. Cool, add soft butter and beat with a mixer into a fluffy mass;
  7. You can play with the flavors of the cream by adding vanillin, vanilla essence, citrus zest or cocoa powder if desired.

Ingredients:

  • 200 g of cottage cheese;
  • 1 stack granulated sugar;
  • 200 ml cream;
  • 1 sachet of vanilla sugar.

Cooking time: 20 min.

Calories per 100 grams: 112 kcal.

How to cook:

  1. Mix low-fat cottage cheese with granulated sugar by hand with a fork or spoon, and then beat with a mixer or blender;
  2. Pour in vanilla sugar and pour in the cream, beat thoroughly again;
  3. Delicate and airy cream is ready. Very simple and fast!

How to make chocolate frosting

Glaze is applied to eclairs , while it is still warm. It is convenient to spread it with a culinary brush. There is another way: gently prick the bottom of the cake with a fork and dip its top into the liquid glaze.

By adding butter, the glaze according to this recipe becomes smooth and shiny after hardening.

Top glaze can be sprinkled with nuts, confectionery powder, pour caramel, decorate with fresh berries or fruits, mint leaves, chocolate figures.

Ingredients:

  • 4 table. spoons of milk;
  • 100 g butter;
  • 4 table. spoons of cocoa;
  • 150 g sugar.

Cooking time: 20 min.

Calories per 100 grams: 442 kcal.

Recipe step by step:

  1. Mix milk with sugar and cocoa powder in a suitable container;
  2. Put on fire;
  3. When sugar dissolves, add butter;
  4. Cook until thickened, stirring constantly and making sure that the glaze does not burn.


And the main advice: cook with love and in a good mood, then you will definitely get an elegant delicious dessert at the level of the famous French pastry shops!

Another recipe for custard dough is very clearly shown in the following video.

Profiteroles, eclairs, choux buns are made from light, airy, crispy choux pastry. Such a dough rises in the oven, increasing in volume several times.

Custards become airy due to the large amount of water in the dough. When steam is formed inside the dough, it rises high up. A large cavity appears inside the products, which is filled with various fillings, creams. Custard cakes have a smooth shiny surface. Choux pastry is also used to make donuts, which are fried in a large amount of oil.

Choux pastry - general principles and methods of preparation

To prepare such a dough, you do not need to have any long experience. It does not roll out and does not knead by hand. Profiteroles can be spooned onto the roasting pan or squeezed out with a piping bag. To make the dough successful, you need to know only two rules:

- the dough must have a certain temperature - about 70-80 degrees to be hot enough, but not to fold the eggs;
Eggs must be warmed to at least room temperature before being introduced.

Before baking, the dough is reheated, or "boiled". In addition to flour, the composition of the dough includes water, butter, margarine, eggs. The number of eggs is selected depending on the amount of flour. It is due to the eggs that the dough becomes loose, rises and is filled with air. Do not add too much sugar to the dough so that it does not caramelize during heating.

Choux pastry - the best recipes:

Choux pastry for cheese eclairs

This is a quick recipe for yeast-free choux pastry. Whoever dares to try it will not be able to remain indifferent to unusual eclairs cooked with cheese and hot peppers (with savory fillings). You can choose any fillings - meat, sweet, cream or vegetable. Fry or bake eclairs in the oven - this is just an incomparable version of choux pastry.

Ingredients: water (250 grams), salt, butter (100 grams, you can take margarine), flour (200 grams), hard cheese (150 grams), paprika (1 tsp), cumin, eggs (5 pieces).

Cooking method:
The usual custard dough begins with the dissolution of butter in water. Pour the flour into the boiling liquid and mix thoroughly. Remove fire and cool. We drive in the eggs one at a time, kneading well after each, rub the cheese into the finished dough and pour in the paprika. If you turn on the fantasy, you can add dried herbs. Fans of spicy, can add ground or hot pepper instead of paprika. The amount of cheese is also arbitrary. But it is simply impossible to spoil eclairs with cheese.

Put the dough on a baking sheet using a pastry bag. The easiest option is to use a regular spoon dipped in water. Sprinkle with cumin and coarse salt. Bake at 220 degrees until golden brown. The main rule when baking is not to open the oven for 10-15 minutes. If the temperature in the oven is too high, the products will first swell, and then they may fall off. If the temperature is too low, cakes do not rise well. Put a little water on the bottom of the oven - then the dough will rise higher.

Choux pastry for cakes with whipped cream

According to this recipe, you can get 12-14 blanks for cakes very quickly. It's easy to fill them with whipped egg whites and sprinkle them with nuts, for example.

Ingredients: butter (50 grams), water (250 grams), salt, flour (150 grams), eggs (4 pcs.).

Cooking method:
We heat water in a saucepan, add salt and butter, heat it up, without bringing the liquid to a boil. We immediately pour all the flour into the pan right on the fire. Stir with a whisk until a lump forms. Knead the dense dough in a lump in a circle for another 2 minutes, as a result, it should separate well from the walls of the pan. Transfer it to a bowl and break the eggs one at a time. Mix the dough, stir it in a circle for 5 minutes. It should be smooth and creamy. Ideally, the custard dough is homogeneous, shiny, and falls off the whisk in long pieces. In a preheated oven to a temperature of 200 degrees, lay out the cakes of the desired shape at a distance so that when baking they do not connect, changing the volume. Bake 30-35 minutes.

Choux pastry for donuts

Delicious tender donuts are fried in a large amount of fat. You will not even have time to fry them, as they will be solemnly eaten by your family.

Ingredients: a glass of water, butter (80 grams), eggs (4 pieces), salt, flour (1 cup), oil for frying.
Cream: 1 cup milk, sugar (0.5 cups), butter (150 grams), vanilla, egg.

Cooking method:
We select suitable dishes and heat the oil in water to about 70-80 degrees, add salt. Remove from heat, stir with a spoon. Put back on the fire, stir the dough until it begins to lag behind the bottom and walls of the pan. Remove from heat, cool slightly and beat in the eggs one at a time until it is smooth and shiny. Heat up oil for frying. Drop the dough into the boiling oil with a teaspoon. There should be a lot of oil, it is desirable that the pieces of dough float and sink in it.

Cream: dissolve the egg in a small saucepan, rub it with sugar and flour. Dilute milk, put on fire. Stirring, cook until thickened, cool and beat with butter. The temperature should not be lower than room temperature. Let the donuts cool, cut and decorate with cream.

— For choux pastry, the quality of the eggs is very important. To make sure they are fresh, you can conduct a test: dip the egg into a glass of water. A stale egg will not stay at the bottom of the glass, but will float up. Eggs that pop up blunt end up should not be used at all.

- Choux pastry does not need to be kneaded with a mixer or combine - if you get carried away too much, it will not be able to rise. The dough should not be thick or runny so that it rises well in the oven, it should double in size.

- Softer and lighter products are obtained from flour with a reduced gluten content.

- Butter can be replaced with margarine or concentrated fats, but it is better, of course, to use natural ingredients. Butter helps cakes rise while baking in the oven.

Ready-made pastry from choux pastry, due to a special recipe for brewing it, turns out to be airy and tender. Preparing such a dough seems to be not difficult, but not all housewives undertake to cook it.

How to cook choux pastry - secrets

Secrets to follow when preparing choux pastry:

  • Lumps of dough laid out in a mold should be immediately placed in a heated oven. If the dough is not placed immediately in the oven, a crust will form on its surface and it will not rise.
  • Eggs are added to the dough, holding them at room temperature, if you add cold ones, then products from such dough in the oven will not rise well.
  • After brewing the dough, let it cool down to 60-70°C, and then add the eggs. The temperature can be measured without a thermometer - by hand: a finger dipped into the dough can withstand such a temperature.
  • The dough should not be higher or lower than 60-70 ° C, if it is higher, the eggs will curl and the dough will not rise, if it is lower, the dough will be covered with a crust and also will not rise.
  • It is not always necessary to take the number of eggs in the dough that is written in the recipe: eggs can be of different sizes, and the dough should turn out to be thick as very fat sour cream.
  • If the dough turned out to be thick or liquid, and has already cooled down, then it can only be corrected by kneading a new dough (respectively, a little watery for thick, and thick for liquid dough), and mix into the previous dough. Adding flour or eggs to cold dough is unacceptable - it will turn into a cake.
  • The dough must be kneaded by hand, from the mixer it becomes watery, and will not fit well in the oven.
  • Lumps of dough should be laid out on a sheet no more than 1 teaspoon, large lumps do not rise well.
  • The distance between lumps of dough should be left 2 cm or more.
  • Before baking, grease the mold with a small amount of oil, if there is a lot of oil, the future cakes will blur and crack from the bottom, and if you do not grease it at all, then they will stick to the bottom of the mold.
  • In order for the cakes to rise well, the oven door must not be opened during the entire baking time.

How to cook custard dough - recipe

To prepare the custard dough you need:

  • 1 glass of flour and water;
  • 100 g butter;
  • 4-5 eggs;
  • a pinch of salt.

Let's start cooking:

  • In a saucepan, add salt and oil to the water, heat to a boil.
  • We fasten a low fire, pour out all the flour and knead the dough for 1-2 minutes (do not turn off the fire), until it is homogeneous and stops sticking to the walls of the pan.
  • Cool the lump of dough to 60-70 ° C, drive in 1 egg and knead intensively until smooth.
  • Then add the rest of the eggs in the same way. If after the last egg according to the recipe the dough is thick, add, until it has cooled down, another half of the egg.
  • We heat the oven to 190°C.
  • On oiled vegetable oil spread the sheet with a teaspoon of round lumps or oblong sausages at a distance of 2 cm. Every time before dipping into the dough, we moisten the spoon in cold water.
  • Immediately put the sheet with the dough in a hot oven and bake for about 30 minutes or until golden brown.


What can be prepared from choux pastry?

Choux pastry can be used to make eclairs, round fried pies with filling, donuts, profiteroles for consomme, French gougère buns, and Ladyfingers cake.

We bake a cake "Lady's fingers"

  • one and a half glasses of water;
  • 220 g flour;
  • 150 g butter;
  • 5-6 eggs;
  • a pinch of salt.
  • 700 g sour cream 20% fat;
  • 350 ml cream 33% fat;
  • 260 g sugar.

To decorate the cake you need:

  • 40 g dark chocolate;
  • 1 st. a spoonful of butter.

Cooking "fingers":

  • Knead the dough and bake "fingers".
  • Boil water with oil and salt.
  • Add flour and knead the dough.
  • In a slightly cooled dough, add one egg at a time and knead.
  • Lightly grease the metal sheet with vegetable oil. Squeeze the dough from the confectionery syringe onto the sheet with thin sticks, 5-6 cm in length.
  • We put the sheet in an oven heated to 190 ° C, and bake without opening the door for about 30 minutes.
  • We spread the baked "fingers" for cooling.

Preparing the cream:

  • Beat 250 ml of very cold cream with sugar (190 g) in a mixer until thickened.
  • Add 0.5 l of sour cream and stir until smooth.

Cake assembly:

  • We collect the cake in a form with a detachable rim, about 28 cm in diameter. Pour a few tablespoons of cream into it, distribute it throughout the form.
  • We put the “fingers” tightly on the cream, if there is space between the cookies, cut several “fingers” into slices and place them in the holes.
  • Top with cream.
  • Do the same for the second layer and subsequent layers.
  • We put a plate on top, and on it some kind of weight - we place this structure for 6-7 hours in a cold place.
  • After a certain time, the cake is overturned on a dish.
  • From cream (100 ml), sour cream (200 g) and sugar (70 g), beat another cream, and grease the cake, top and sides with it.
  • We melt the chocolate and butter for a couple, and with a confectionery syringe we make a mesh along the top and sides of the cake.
  • We put the cake in a cold place for 1-2 hours, then you can try.



So, we learned how to cook choux pastry and pastries from it.

Profiteroles, eclairs, choux buns are made from light, airy, crispy choux pastry. Such a dough rises in the oven, increasing in volume several times.

Choux buns and cakes become airy due to the large amount of water in the dough. When steam is formed inside the dough, it rises high up. A large cavity appears inside the products, which is filled with various fillings, creams. Custard cakes have a smooth shiny surface. Choux pastry is also used to make donuts, which are fried in a large amount of oil.

Choux pastry - general principles and methods of preparation

To prepare such a dough, you do not need to have any long experience. It does not roll out and does not knead by hand. Pofiteroles can be spooned onto the roasting pan or squeezed out with a piping bag. To make the dough successful, you need to know only two rules:

- the dough must have a certain temperature - about 70-80 degrees to be hot enough, but not to fold the eggs;
Eggs must be warmed to at least room temperature before being introduced.

Before baking, the dough is reheated, or "boiled". In addition to flour, the composition of the dough includes water, butter, margarine, eggs. The number of eggs is selected depending on the amount of flour. It is due to the eggs that the dough becomes loose, rises and is filled with air. Do not add too much sugar to the dough so that it does not caramelize during heating.

Recipe 1: Choux Dough for Cheese Eclairs

This is a quick recipe for yeast-free choux pastry. Whoever dares to try it will not be able to remain indifferent to unusual eclairs cooked with cheese and hot peppers (with savory fillings). You can choose any fillings - meat, sweet, cream or vegetable. Fry or bake eclairs in the oven - this is just an incomparable version of choux pastry.

Ingredients: water (250 grams), salt, butter (100 grams, you can take margarine), flour (200 grams), durum cheese (150 grams), paprika (1 tsp), cumin, eggs (5 pieces) .

Cooking method

The usual custard dough begins with the dissolution of butter in water. Pour the flour into the boiling liquid and mix thoroughly. Remove fire and cool. We drive in the eggs one at a time, kneading well after each, rub the cheese into the finished dough and pour in the paprika. If you turn on the fantasy, you can add dried herbs. Fans of spicy, can add ground or hot pepper instead of paprika. The amount of cheese is also arbitrary. But it is simply impossible to spoil eclairs with cheese.

Put the dough on a baking sheet using a pastry bag. The easiest option is to use a regular spoon dipped in water. Sprinkle with cumin and coarse salt. Bake at 220 degrees until golden brown. The main rule when baking is not to open the oven for 10-15 minutes. If the temperature in the oven is too high, the products will first swell, and then they may fall off. If the temperature is too low, cakes do not rise well. Put a little water on the bottom of the oven - then the dough will rise higher.

Recipe 2: Choux pastry for cakes with whipped cream

According to this recipe, you can get 12-14 blanks for cakes very quickly. It's easy to fill them with whipped egg whites and sprinkle them with nuts, for example.

Ingredients: butter (50 grams), water (250 grams), salt, flour (150 grams), eggs (4 pcs.).

Cooking method

We heat water in a saucepan, add salt and butter, heat it up, without bringing the liquid to a boil. We immediately pour all the flour into the pan right on the fire. Stir with a whisk until a lump forms. Knead the dense dough in a lump in a circle for another 2 minutes, as a result, it should separate well from the walls of the pan. Transfer it to a bowl and break the eggs one at a time. Mix the dough, stir it in a circle for 5 minutes. It should be smooth and creamy. Ideally, the custard dough is homogeneous, shiny, and falls off the whisk in long pieces. In a preheated oven to a temperature of 200 degrees, lay out the cakes of the desired shape at a distance so that when baking they do not connect, changing the volume. Bake 30-35 minutes.

Recipe 3: Choux dough for donuts

Delicious tender donuts are fried in a large amount of fat. You will not even have time to fry them, as they will be solemnly eaten by your family.

Ingredients: a glass of water, butter (80 grams), eggs (4 pieces), salt, flour (1 cup), oil for frying.
Cream: 1 cup milk, sugar (0.5 cups), butter (150 grams), vanilla, egg.

Cooking method

We select suitable dishes and heat the oil in water to about 70-80 degrees, add salt. Remove from heat, stir with a spoon. Put back on the fire, stir the dough until it begins to lag behind the bottom and walls of the pan. Remove from heat, cool slightly and beat in the eggs one at a time until it is smooth and shiny. Heat up oil for frying. Drop the dough into the boiling oil with a teaspoon. There should be a lot of oil, it is desirable that the pieces of dough float and sink in it.

Cream: dissolve the egg in a small saucepan, rub it with sugar and flour. Dilute milk, put on fire. Stirring, cook until thickened, cool and beat with butter. The temperature should not be lower than room temperature. Let the donuts cool, cut and decorate with cream.

— For choux pastry, the quality of the eggs is very important. To make sure they are fresh, you can conduct a test: dip the egg into a glass of water. A stale egg will not stay at the bottom of the glass, but will float up. Eggs that pop up blunt end up should not be used at all.

- Choux pastry does not need to be kneaded with a mixer or combine - if you get carried away too much, it will not be able to rise. The dough should not be thick or runny so that it rises well in the oven, it should double in size.

- Softer and lighter products are obtained from flour with a reduced gluten content.

- Butter can be replaced with margarine or concentrated fats, but it is better, of course, to use natural ingredients. Butter helps cakes rise while baking in the oven.

The main thing when working with choux pastry (however, as with many other types of it) is strict adherence to the proportions of ingredients and cooking technology. This process must be brought to automaticity, measured and cooked many times, only then eclairs, profiteroles or “Shu” cakes will turn out porous, airy, with a confident crust and a slightly salty taste.

Unfortunately, in our time, the fact that choux pastry can be cooked not only can be slightly forgotten. Previously, small profiteroles were baked as a side dish for broths, to which grated cheese and aromatic herbs were added. Cooking books also preserved recipes for custard pies. yeast dough- they turn out lush, tender, with a smooth shiny crust.

Choux pastry features

This dough is called custard due to the fact that in the process of its preparation, flour is brewed. For this, flour with a gluten content of 28-30%, oil and water are used. Flour and water are recommended to be taken in equal quantities, and oil is half as much. From point of view confectionery technology preparation of custard dough consists of the following stages: preparation of custard, its cooling, adding eggs and kneading dough, then forming products and baking.

Welding flour allows the dough to retain a sufficiently large amount of liquid and at the same time keep its shape and not blur. The fact is that during the addition of flour to a boiling mixture of water, oil and salt, when it is stirred, water shells form around the flour particles, allowing the starch to swell evenly. In the future, during baking, due to the swollen starch, a crust quickly forms on the dough. At the same time, the moisture contained in it turns into steam and, held back by this crust, increases the dough in volume (although then it still breaks through the outer crust, forming small cracks). That is why choux pastry products contain so many voids inside.

cooking secrets

So, at the first stage of preparing the dough, water is mixed with oil and salt and, with stirring, is brought to a boil. As soon as the mixture boils, add flour to it and, without removing the container from the fire, knead the tea leaves with a spatula until cooked. If this is not done, the tea leaves will burn and a crust will form on it, which will negatively affect the quality of the products in the future. The main task at this stage is to evaporate excess liquid from the tea leaves, since initially it has a viscous consistency, and mix it thoroughly. A good finished tea leaves should be homogeneous, the consistency is sufficiently elastic and without lumps, have a light color and easily lag behind the walls of the container.

The finished tea leaves must be removed from the heat and cooled to 65-70 ° C so that the eggs introduced into it do not curl. It is recommended to add eggs one at a time to better control the consistency of the dough.

When preparing a recipe for dough or desserts, the mass of one egg is conventionally taken as 50 g; in practice, eggs can have different masses and be less or more than the established ideal. In this case, an increase in the mass of eggs in the custard dough can lead to its excess liquid and, as a result, fallen products, so the eggs are introduced gradually. Too thick dough consistency is also not correct. In this case, the surface of the products will be torn, and they themselves will only slightly increase in volume.

The finished dough should flow off the spatula in the form of a triangle. The products themselves, depending on their type, are formed using a pastry bag with a round or notched nozzle. Finished products are deposited directly on sheets covered with baking paper and greased with oil or grease. If the sheets are not lubricated, the products will stick to them and tear when separated. If there is too much oil or fat, the products will blur and will not be able to fully rise.

Baking rate

Products from choux pastry are baked for the first 12-15 minutes at a temperature of 220 ° C, then at 190 ° C. For cakes, the baking time is 32-40 minutes, for cakes - up to 35 minutes. At a lower baking temperature, the products do not rise enough, at a higher temperature they are obtained with breaks on the surface. The main signs of the readiness of products are a light brown crust and elasticity (the product should not bend and fall off when pressed). Before filling the finished product with cream, it must be dried so that it does not settle when cooled, and only then cooled.

What are the main mistakes that can be made in the process of preparing the dough?

1. If the dough is too thin (insufficient flour, too many eggs, weak gluten flour), the product will not rise.

2. If the dough is too thick (increased proportions of flour, insufficient number of eggs, insufficient dough kneading time), then in this case the products will turn out with a torn surface.