It's all about choux, it's all about choux, baby

Today was purely theoretical work so nowt to report on the baking front. However, after the mater posed some questions about choux pastry on the hooter the other day I thought I would do a quick post on that front.

Of course, I am not a qualified patisserie teacher - but apart from anything else it'll be good revision for me to gather together all the choux tips I've received in the last month and let those that are interested have a sniff.

So here is as much as I can remember. There's a lot of extra guff I'll put in notes for those that are interested in the details. If anyone spots mistakes, please let me know so I can alter the misinformation.

[PS Now I have finished writing the below it turns out there's a LOT of bumpf. I wanted to be as complete as my current knowledge would allow. If you are new to choux pastry just ignore the nitty gritty and have a bash. I've found it to be much more forgiving than many other kinds of pastry.]

Essential choux
Choux pastry is characterised by its moisture. In this sense it is more of a thick batter than a pastry. It is this moisture locked into the pastry which evaporates on cooking to cause the typical voluminosity.

Another feature of choux pastry is that it is effectively cooked twice: once on the gas (or induction plate &c.) and then in the oven. A similar pastry was recorded in a Roman cookbook over 2000 years ago. It's a beast with heritage.

A typical recipe
1kg water
400g butter
15g salt
30g sugar
600g flour
900g eggs

- A little goes a long way. All this was done with half the above recipe and room to spare. Normally in class we make a 1/4 litre (i.e. a quarter of the quantities above) which will do a large baking sheet and a half of chouquettes or, if I remember correctly, 21 eclairs comfortably.

- Most choux pastry recipes will be similar but the ratios of ingredients may be slightly different.

- Some recipes replace all or some of the water with milk. Due to its fat content, milk produces a more melt in the mouth effect but it also colours more in the oven and will soften more quickly once out of the oven.

- Some recipes do not have any sugar. A non-sweetened pastry can still be used for sweet dishes like eclairs.

- Some recipes add a small quantity of cheese e.g. 50g gruyère for a savoury pastry.

Making the pastry

I recommend weighing all the ingredients before starting.

1. Bring the water, butter, salt and sugar to a rollicking boil in a decent saucepan.

• NB This means the butter can come straight out of the fridge. Chunking it will save you time.

• NB2 This is a good moment to sieve the flower. At school we always sieve onto a large sheet of greaseproof paper which is very practical both in terms of avoiding spillage and for later wielding what has been sieved.

• NB3 This phase can be done directly in the metal bowl of your mixer. Just plonk it on the gas.
  

2. Lob in the flour and with an Exoglass spatula (or wooden spoon) mix thoroughly.

• NB Some people recommend doing this off the heat but in my brief experience this makes no difference what-so-bloody-ever. It should be very quick, after all.

• NB2 Some people recommend adding a little flour at a time to avoid lumps. We do the whole canoodle in one go, never have lumps and this also has the advantage of ensuring all the flour is equally cooked.
  

3. Dry out the mixture on a decent flame.

• NB This is a rather crucial stage. Effectively you are dehydrating the mixture a little. Later, the moisture lost in this stage will be replaced with the eggs. The reason you have these two stages is to give the sought texture... initially, the water swells the flour and lets it cook at a temperature which would coagulate the eggs if they had already been added.

NB2 There is no exact time for this drying out. Some people say 3mins but this might be too long or too short depending on many factors such as the quality of flour, the conduction of your saucepan &c. One guide is to wait until the pastry comes away neatly from the sides of the pan. My preferred tip is to wait until a decent film forms over the bottom of the pan. There's a fair amount of leeway here.

Pastry at the end of stage 3. You can see the crusty film which lines the pan.

4. Cool the pastry. I.e. take it off the heat and stir.

• NB If the eggs were added straight away they would start to cook in the pastry so it needs to be reduced in temperature to below 60°.

• NB2 For this phase, I decant the pastry into the bowl of a mixer and let it turn with the leaf attachment. Not sure what the English is for leaf attachment. In a Kenwood mixer it is the one in the shape of a 'K'. In any case, that which isn't the whisk or the hook. You can equally continue by hand.

• NB3 No need for a thermometer. Just put your hand on the base of the recipient and wait until it is warm but not hot to the touch.

• NB4 During this stage the water will continue to evaporate. Indeed, if heating directly in the bowl of the mixer you can proceed thusly: during stage 2 add the flour but use the machine to mix it in... stage 3 will segue automatically with the residual heat in the bowl and no need for additional heating.
  

5. Add those eggs.

• NB If you are doing this by hand, easier to beat the eggs a little first to loosen them up.

• NB2 Add the eggs one at a time. Obviously, if you've just followed NB1 you will no longer 'ave eggs. Whack in the ovulars bit by bit, waiting for the last dose to be fully absorbed before adding more. This makes the absorption of the eggs much quicker nay possible at all, giving a better texture.

• NB3 Hold back the last egg or so until you have checked the consistency of the dough (see below). The exact quantity of eggs will depend on an intimidating number of factors such as how much you cooked the pastry in step 3. You can add more egg to a stiff dough but cannot rescue one which is liquidite.

• NB4 As for mixer speed... not too fast. If you go around incorporating air you'll get bubbles in your piping bag that will reek havoc with decent eclairs.
  

6. Check the consistency.

• NB Some people find it easier to dress (i.e. pipe/shape) a firmer pastry, others prefer a sloppier (the French say more supple) one. The guide I have been taught which I like is to lift up a big dollop of the pastry on a spatula and let it drip off back into the bowl. It should leave the spatula reluctantly. However, where the pastry tears the bit attached to the spatula should retract into a neat triangle rather than leave a jaggedy edge. Does this make no sense? I'll have to try and take some photos.

Photo as promised showing yon triangle. Caught the chap in the background nicely, too.

7. Best to use the pastry straight away.

• NB But I have heard of someone who pops it in a piping bag and keeps it overnight in the fridge. I have untried and untested this idea.

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I had been going to spew forth on the tips I've received for dressing and cooking ze patte but this post is already far too long and I ain't even got any photos. So... to be continued.

Surprising pair o' ducks

I had decided to do a post describing my rigorous and scintillating daily schedule for those who might be interested in how my baking school actually works but the Internet went down here and it's got rather late. 

Some folks from my new class

 

Instead, just a rather surprising fact. Our chef told us most people put on 4 kilos or so during the course of the course. Bizarrely, in my first two weeks I lost a stone and yesterday I moved up a notch on my belt. This, despite eating pastry for breakfast, delusionally buying several patisserie numbers at lunch under the guise of research, tasting produce in the kitchen in the afternoon and quite often thoroughly eating said produce with my family in the evening.

The weight loss might also have something to do with the removal of 7 months of hair (from my head), accidentally ravaged by a budget 10€ barber with a blunt pair of scissors, operating in a shop which didn't even have a sink between 4 haircutters. Something must have got lost in translation as my "pas trop court" came out more more Wallace & Grommit than Jonathan Ross and the hair on my crown is a good inch longer than my fringe. Haute coiffure.

I know it's quite normal for people dieting to put on a bit of weight before it comes off... so I hope this loss is not overture to an exponential ballooning

In which: old man - weak bladder - heart tart

Rouen has a large island in the middle of the Seine, and the island has a magnificent swimming centre. It has a 25m pool indoors and a heated, floodlight, olympic-sized pool outside. Given the general lack of temperature at the moment, the outdoor pool steams and you cannot see the other end through the mist. I went the other day when it was snowing and visibility was about 3m. This was quite gripping given the lack of lanes.

Now, I've always had a slight issue with chlorine messing up the oculars. Too cool to wear goggles, I used to suffer it out at prep school for the weekly swim. The problem was, in the Winter, we used to have swimming on a Wednesday which was also the day of my piano lesson. I would go straight from the pool to Mrs Burton in Cheam and find myself unable to read my music and as a consequence played all the wrong notes. This she took as an indicator of insufficient practice and proved a regular source of tears.

Today, leaving the pool, I was trotting back to the bus stop when I saw an old man, right in the middle of the pavement next to the Animal Shelter, pissing quite openly against a tree. I know the French are rather matter-of-fact about these things but I was a tad surprised. As I drew closer, I noticed through my chlorine cataracts that he was, in fact, not taking the world's most public piss but tying his wee dog to the aforementioned tree and rather struggling to fasten the clip.

But as I got really quite adjacent to him, focus shifted once again and it turned out my first spot had been correct. The dog was simply waiting patiently while his master whipped out his shlanger and hosed down the silver birch.

I also made a strawberry and lemon heart tart for ye olde family inspired by the date and the fact I had the remnants of some puff pastry I made the other day. I usually say my photos are bad but this one takes the biscuit. I should at least have turned on the main light in the kitchen. It was very easy to make: puff pastry base cut out in a heartish shape with a puff pastry border, blind baked after a good pricking to prevent it rising too much, lined with a simple lemon curd and dressed with thinly sliced strawberries. A very quick job given the pastry was already made.

I rolled the puff pastry out in sugar rather than flour and flipped it before cooking so that it was slightly caramelized. Didn't have anything to use as a glaze and I prob should have egged the case once blind-baked to keep the juices in. I fear it will be very soggy by the time we come to eat it in the morning.

Paris-Beast

Today we had one of our busiest days in the labo so far but in the grand scheme of things it really wasn't that bad. We continued our work in choux pastry by attacking some more complicated patisseries and also finished off our allumettes and cream horns.

I struggle to know the best word in English for the French 'pâtisserie' where it refers to an item of pâtisserie like and eclair, for example. A pastry would be the obvious choice but I really do not like that word as in English you can't really use it to apply to a mousse or anything which isn't heavily clad in pastry like a turnover. Dish is not quite right as that's more of a restaurant term and cake/pudding/dessert do not feel right either. Ideas on a postcard to Rouen.

That said, the two new items we attacked today were the Paris-Brest and the St. Honoré.

The Paris-Brest was named in honour of the Paris-Brest cycle race, the oldest cycle race in the world which is still competed. You have to get from Paris to Brest (on the Westernmost tip of Britanny) and back again within 90 hours. It's about 750 miles. A baker along the route allegedly decided to create a pastry (ugh) to celebrate the race and that is what is known as a Paris-Brest and is very popular in France (but, despite this, not that often seen). It's meant to look a little like a bicycle tyre. Unfortunately our teacher did not tell us about the history but I managed to find out in a book.

A small Paris-Brest is a choux ring about the size of a bagel covered with chopped nuts and filled with a special hazelnut cream. The large Paris-B is considerably trickier. It's a large choux ring the size of a decent halo formed by piping one choux ring inside the other with a third on top nestling in the crotch. Then there is a fourth ring piped separately called the couronne (crown) which is rather like the inner tube... in our version this couronne is filled with crème pâtissière (flavoured with kirsch), and this is inserted inside the fat ring which is filled with the hazelnut cream. Quite a fiddly operation.

In the photo above, the left rack has 6 small Paris-Brests at the top, the fat, outer ring on the left underneath and the inner tube on the right. The filling is done by cutting the various components in half horizontally. The finished cake is rather a beast but no photo of mine because my inner tube had too big a diameter and as a result the garnishing went awry. It should end up looking rather like this.

A good way to pipe the circles is to dip a tart ring in flour and bang it onto the baking sheet. It will leave a trace which you can be followed when piping.

We did not have time to assemble the St. Honoré so we froze the choux and will come back to them on Tuesday.

Thursday: revenge is quick

Today goes down as a thorough cock-up, retribution no doubt for yesterday's comments. We were due to make a Pithiviers and a vol-au-vent. The latter is considerably more elaborate than a dip into Iceland would lead you to believe... a full-size one is as big as a plate and decorated elaborately like a galette. Anyway, each of these recipes requires a quarter 'paton' (=portion) of puff pastry. I duly cut the pastry I made yesterday into quarters and started to roll out only to be rather surprised how thin it all was once at the requisite dimensions.

The vol-au-vent was really pants and scarcely rose at all. The Pithiviers remains uncooked. Right at the end of our 7 hours in the kitchen I worked it out... yesterday we had not made a whole paton, but just a half meaning that I had been trying the recipes with an eighth of a paton i.e. half the amount pastry required.

Bother. Waste of a day.

The only things that turned out all right were my cornets. These are puff pastry cornucopia type things which you can cram with crème pâtissière or similar. I think my Mum would call them cream horns which is maybe not quite right. Here's a before and after to show how they're moulded (moulds left in for cooking) and then the glazed and roasted horn. They're very smooth on the inside. Once they're garnished I might afford another snap. If you're lucky.

Here is my second batch of allumettes before garnishing. Various decor experiments including a taste of home on the top left.

Wednesday: the illogical French and a dodgy sponge

Really quite gruntled by today's goings-on. I made allumettes for the second time and they were much better (but not yet garnished so no photo), also made a cracking (French) meringue spiral and a nice looking sponge.

But it was with a rather odd recipe which had no butter. Even more strangely, tomorrow, the meringue spiral (diameter of 20cm) is going to be inserted into the sponge. I have no idea how this will end up. The French may do excellent patisserie but they can't do a decent spongecake.

The other day, our first foray into sponge, we produced these nut tarts. They consist of a pastry shell with a cm or so of dense sponge soaked in rum syrup with a thick and IMHO not very nice caramel on top. The border is almond paste. Simply horrible.

Since I've moved classes we've been made to use reusable piping bags for any produce which is going to be cooked whereas before we only used disposable plastic ones. The teacher keeps banging on about the cost of the plastic ones when it comes to working in industry.

Well, I did some sums. The plastic ones allegedly cost 20 cents each. Now, let's say you pay your assistant just €10/hour. That means for 20 cents (i.e. the equivalent of a disposable pastry bag) you get 72 seconds of his time. But a pastry bag caked in almond paste takes a good couple of minutes to clean to a hygenic standard and that's without taking the cost of the hot water and detergent into account.

Still, I shan't be telling my teacher this right away...

In other illogicalities, prof told us it took too much time to cut greaseproof paper discs to line the cakes tins and therefore butter was a better option. However, to ensure a sufficient buttering we had to do one layer of butter, refrigerate the tin until the butter set hard and then apply another layer. Hm.

Tip of the day was the way of making the sponge. The egg yolks and sugar were heated to 45° in a bain-marie (directly in the metal bowl of the mixer) before being whisked. The heat helps the sugar dissolve but, perhaps more importantly, the eggs start to coagulate which means the mixture should hold its lightness better. Well, yet to test the results but it sounds good in theory.

Tuesday: lattices, shoe buns, improvements and mild vindication

Today we started by cooking the lattice apple tarts we made at the end of last week. Extremely simple... just line a tart ring with puff pastry, fill with apple compote and cover with a puff pastry lattice.

The lattice is made with a roller device which cuts the requisite slots in rolled-out pastry. Then you stretch the thing to give it 'the look'. The thick bit in the lattice on the large tart is because the roller wasn't wide enough to do the whole lot in one go and I cocked up the alignment on the second swipe.

Little tip for the manipulation of the lattice... we put them in the deep freeze for a short while once rolled out to make them easier to manipulate onto the tart base. To attach the lattice to the base you place the lattice (with excess) onto the tart and simply roll over with a rolling pin which serves the double function of trimming the lattice exactly and sealing it down.

Still not a fan of this tinned apple compote but if you made your own puree this would be a delicious and simple tart. Bizarrely have just accidentally found the recipe as published by my school: apple lattice tart recipe. NB QS means quantité suffisante or 'to taste'.

Astonishingly my prof saw my big one come out of the oven and told me it was 'belle'. Did I smell a rat? That was the first non-critical word he'd ever passed my way... moreover, the tart wasn't that great due to the roller malfunction. Here is an astonishingly poor photo and I hadn't glazed the buggers either.

We also continued to practise our choux pastry, making religieuses au chocolat, éclairs au café and salambôs au rhum. Here's a before and after on the icing front. They all need some practice.

On the eclair front, mild vindication in that our hygiene training video which entertained us for 45 minutes yesterday featured a patissier creaming his eclairs my way. And the video was even made by the school. Unfortunately that class was taken by a different prof. The eclairs above have been crammed the traditional way.

Small note on the religieuses: if you pierce the small choux (the so-called nun's head) underneath but the large one on top in order to fill them, the holes are hidden once the thing is completed. On a not entirely different note, I have realized the tautology of the English 'choux bun' when in French the one word ('choux') suffices. It's a bit like saying 'shoe trainer' when a trainer is always going to be a shoe. (Unless it's your personal trainer...)

In other news, the college administrator called me out of the class half way through and said she had received my email. To my horror she invited me to a meeting with my chef before lunch tomorrow. What could be worse. It made me think of those social-penance schemes where you have to meet the person you've mugged. Although, in this instance, I'm not quite sure which one of us represents the victim.

Mysteriously, though, the chap had been being much more decent today, starting with his compliment of the naff lattice and continuing via patient explanations of techniques not quite mastered and fewer alien looks when I attempted to speak to him in French. So after the lesson I ran to the administrator's office, told her as much and got her to flush the idea of a tête à tête out of her head.

At this point she revealed she had already spoken to my prof about my email. Aha, so that explains it. There's my rat.

Still, as long as things continue in this fashion we'll all be happy. Fingers crossed.