Choux pastry is a light and airy pastry used to make profiteroles, éclairs, and other pastries. It is made from just four ingredients - water, butter, flour, and eggs. The ingredients are boiled together then cooled before the eggs are added. When baked, the dough puffs up dramatically as the eggs set inside the oven's heat. Choux pastry is versatile for both savory and sweet fillings and makes a unique hollow pastry ideal for holding creams and custards.

1. CHOUX PASTRY

2. Choux pastry truly is a little piece of magic.
It starts out as a small little ball of dough,
but turns into a light, airy and fluffy hollow
ball in the oven! It makes delicious
profiteroles, éclairs, cream puffs and
Bossche bollen (a speciality from the South
of the Netherlands).

3. What is choux pastry?
• Choux pastry is the dough that
makes profiteroles , but also
those beautiful éclairs. The main
characteristic of choux pastry is
that it forms a very airy structure
with large holes that are ideal
for introducing a filling into.
• Choux pastry itself is savory and
doesn’t have a lot of flavor, it’s
quite neutral, maybe a little
eggy. That’s why the filling tends
to be the element that makes a
snack with choux pastry really
stand out.

4. Making choux pastry
Choux pastry is its own type
of dough. It’s probably most
like hot water crust pastry
since both doughs require
you to cook the dough,
before you put it into the
oven.
The dough is then baked in
the oven which is when it
puffs up.

5. CHOUX PASTRY
IS MADE OF 4
INGREDIENTS,
AND EACH OF
THESE HAS A
CLEAR ROLE IN
THE RECIPE:

6. • Water - The water is
required to make a
flexible dough.
• Butter - The butter serves
to give the dough a richer
feel and flavor. If no
butter would be added,
the choux would have
more of a bread like
consistency.

7. • Flour - The flour gives structure to the final bun.
• Egg - The reason eggs are added are various. First,
it adds extra moisture to the mixture and makes it
more flexible. It needs flexibility to expand. Second,
the proteins will form a sturdy structure when
heated, this will support the airy shape of the
profiteroles. Third, eggs contain fat and prevent
the puff from becoming dry.

8. STEP BY STEP PROCEDURE
IN MAKING CHOUX PASTRY

9. Step 1: Boiling butter
& water
• You start by heating up the butter
and water for various reasons. First,
the butter must melt, else we won’t
be able to mix it through evenly, you
might end up with lumps of butter.
Also, the soft butter softens the
overall dough consistency. When it
cools down again, it will contribute
to its firmness. Second, we need
that heat to ‘cook’ the flour in the
next step.

10. • Most recipes call for bringing
the water and butter to the
boil. The reason for doing so is
that it helps accelerate the
next step. That said, you can
still make perfectly fine choux
pastry if you just heat the two
enough for the butter to melt.
You might need to stir a little
longer in step 2 because you
have to make up for that lost
heat.

11. Step 2: Mixing
flour with warm
liquids
• Once the butter and
water are nice and
warm, it’s time to add
the flour. Just about
all recipes say to add it
all in at once and stir
quickly. you should
continue stirring until
the flour + water &
butter mixture form a
nice ball. It shouldn’t
puddle and that ball
should still be soft and
flexible.

12. • During this step you accomplish
an important step of choux
pastry making you cook the
flour. The starch in the flour
needs to gelatinize. When flour
and hot water are mixed the
starch granules within the flour
will absorb water and
ultimately swell and possibly
explode. This releases starch
molecules and is what
thickens the mixture here. You
need enough heat for this to
happen.

13. • This is very similar to what
happens when using flour to
thicken the filling in a pie or when
making a roux for a bechamel
sauce or for donuts.
• It is important not to stir the
mixture for a lot longer than after
it has formed the ball like
consistency. If you continue
stirring and heating the binding
power of the starch can go down
(kind of what happens to some
more extreme in a dark roux). We
did test heating and mixing it for
a little longer than necessary. It
did turn a little clumpy, but the
final profiteroles still turned out
fine. Showing that there’s some
flexibility.

14. Why not
merge step
1 and 2?
• Technically, it is possible to add the
butter, water and flour to a pan and
heat and stir them all together from
the beginning. For smaller quantities
especially, your profiteroles can still
come out perfectly fine. However, it is a
lot more of a hassle. You need to be
more careful not to get lumps or not to
burn the mixture.
• So why doesn’t the method really
matter that much? Well, the main
purpose of this treatment is to melt
the butter, heat the flour, gelatinize
the flour and form a thick paste.
Whether you do that by heating on the
fire or preheating liquid doesn’t really
matter, as long as you mix everything
homogeneously and don’t burn
anything. The science stays the
same!

15. WHY NOT MERGE
STEP 1 AND 2?

16. Forgetting
the butter
or water
So, what will happen if you forget either
the butter or the water? In both cases,
you’re up for a bit of a challenge, but
there can be ways to fix it.
• Forgetting the butter: This could give
you a more chewy/firmer pastry. By
whisking the flour and water without
the butter, you run the risk of
developing the gluten. Also, it’ll be hard
to mix in the butter homogeneously in
the little flour ball that will have
formed. It’s probably best to start all
over.
• Forgetting the water: This shouldn’t
give you as much trouble, the butter
and flour will form a roux. As long as
you remember in time that you’ve
forgotten the water, you can still add it
and thicken up the mixture.

17. Step 3: Adding the
eggs
• Now that you’ve got your ball of
pastry, it’s time to take a break
and leave it to cool down. You
have to cool it down before
adding the eggs, or you run the
risk of cooking the eggs
prematurely!

18. • Eggs contain proteins. These
proteins will curdle and set
when the egg is heating.
This is what happens when
boiling or frying an egg. You
want this curdling to happen
once the eggs are in the
oven since it will help
stabilize the final profiterole.
But you don’t want this to
happen prematurely, or they
won’t be able to flex and
stabilize the newly expanded
structure anymore.

19. Step 4: Baking the profiteroles/choux
pastry
• Now that the eggs have been added, it’s time
for the final step: baking the choux pastry. The
choux pastry is placed on trays in either balls
or longer slivers, depending on your final
preferred shape.

20. • During baking, the doughy,
heavy pastry is converted
into a light and airy puff,
as is shown below. The
dough is such that it is very
flexible but also contains a
lot of water. Because the
flour has already firmed up
during gelatinization it won’t
break but expand because
of all the evaporation of
moisture inside the puff.