Hi and welcome to Bold Baking Basics, this is where we get stuck into the fundamentals
of baking. These videos will have you baking with confidence, anytime, anywhere. In this
episode I'm going to show you can make a choux pastry. This is used to make cream puffs,
profiteroles, and eclairs. The recipe as always can be found on BiggerBolderBaking.com along
with all of my other recipes. Okay, let’s get started in a nice heavy bottomed saucepan.
Add in your milk, cold cubed butter, and a little bit of salt. And then turn the heat
on to medium low, and let the butter melt. So now once your butter melts, you want this
mix to come to almost a boil. It’s called scalding, and you want it to get really hot
but not actually have it boil, and then we’re going to add in our flour. Once you add in
your flour go straightaway in with a wooden spoon and then mix it together until it forms
a ball. You want to do this nice and quick. You’ll see it all come together, this is
exactly what we want, it’s clearing the sides of the pan. So now what you want to
do is just cook this for around 2 minutes on a low heat. Continue moving it as it cooks.
So there we go, this is ready, now our next ingredient is eggs, now it’s really important
that these are at room temperature because we’re going to add them into something hot.
You want to make sure they're not cold from the fridge, so let them sit out for a few
hours. And then with your wooden spoon again and your eggs in hand, go ahead and add a
little bit in at a time, and then keep on mixing until it forms a dough. Add a little
bit more eggs, and keep on mixing. Now I'm very well aware that this is a little bit
of a messy job. It doesn't look like it’s going to form a dough, but just keep adding
a little bit of egg, and just keep on mixing. So it’ll take a few minutes but one your
dough comes together and all your eggs are in there, your dough will look like this,
now it’s not too runny, if it’s too runny you might have a bit of an issue. It’s supposed
to be just this texture. Perfect. Okay so from here I'm gonna get this into my piping
bag. Go ahead and fill a piping bag ¾ of the way full, so I have this guy fitted with
a round nozzle, you can also use a star nozzle, okay, this guy is ready to be piped. So now
here’s my tray lined with parchment paper, but here’s a sneaky little trick that only
professional chefs know about. You wanna take your choux pastry, and just dot it under each
corner of the paper. And what this will do, it will hold down the paper while it’s baking,
because they're so light and delicate they an blow around a little bit, and this will
make sure they stay put. Then all you want to do is take you piping bag and pipe a nice
big circle. A little bit of a dollop. Now make sure you give them enough space in between
because they do puff up when they bake. Now this will make roughly around 18 to like maybe
23-24, depending on how big you make them. Nobody ever complained about getting too big
of a profiteroles, that's for sure. Okay, lovely, these are looking great, now as you
can see they all have little peaks on them, now here's my other little trick, this is
a great one. We have a little bowl of water right here, what you're going to do is dip
your fingers in there, and then just pat down that little bit that's sticking up, and I’ll
tell you why we do that, that can have a tendency to burn in the oven because he’s sticking
up all by himself, you don't want that to happen so just go ahead and boop on his head,
give him a little boop. And down he goes, lovely. So now lastly just before we put it
into a really hot oven, you want to sprinkle a little bit of water on the tray. Now the
reason that we do this is because when it gets into the oven it will create steam, and
the steam will help your choux pastry to rise and get lovely and big. You want to bake these
guys off at 425ºF/210ºC for 20 minutes. So once your choux pastry comes out of the
oven it will be all lovely and golden brown just like this. Now let me show you what they
look like on the inside. So once you rip it open, it should look like this on the inside,
they shouldn't be wet at all, so this is perfect. So a really common thing that happens to choux
pastry is that it can get kind of flat and fall once they come out of the oven. Now I'm
gonna give you a really easy solution for this, once your 20 minutes are up, turn off
the oven, leave the door closed, and leave them in there for around 10 minutes. What
this will do, it will dry them out a little bit, keep them nice and crisp and they won’t
fall. So some people say that when they make choux pastry it can be very eggy tasting,
now that shouldn't happen, but if you follow my baking directions, I guarantee it won’t
happen to you. And that's how you make a classic choux pastry. I really hope you enjoyed this
episode, head over to my website for its more bold baking basics and I’ll see you back
here really soon!