My First Encounter With Choux Pastry

Choux pastry - When I read how everyone advises using a machine instead of hand-beating the dough, I was seriously doubtful if I would succeed the primitive way. I gave it a shot anyway as I was dying to try something new this morning, half expecting the dough to not puff up at all during baking due to potential under-beating.



Guess what? I thought wrongly, the dough was a lot more forgiving. Really, I didn't do much work at all - I gave it the minimum beating required with a wooden spoon till all the ingredients come together, it took less than 5 minutes and my arm was far from tired! I was thrilled to see them puffing up beautifully in the oven.

I divided the dough into 2 batches after combining the eggs: 1 batch I left plain to be used for dessert and the other mixed with grated comte and parmesan and pepper to be served as gougeres.

The gougeres turned out beautifully! Yes, the more and the stronger the cheese, the better they taste.

For dessert, I filled some of the plain ones with a simple coffee cream and some with leftover lemon curd, topped with a shower of icing sugar. That worked just as wonderfully.

PS. I used Pierre Herme's recipe for choux pastry but baked at 200 degree Celsius for 20 minutes.