How to Make Choux Pastry Dough

Choux pastry is unlike any other dough. There's no resting, no laminating, no blind baking. You cook it twice: once on the stove, once in the oven. That first cook drives off the moisture and sets the starch, which is what gives choux its structure and its hollow centre. The eggs go in after, giving the dough the lift and gloss it needs to pipe and puff properly.

It's the foundation of everything we make: éclairs, profiteroles, craquelin. We make it every morning.

Here's how.

Ingredients

Milk 1550g
Butter 600g
Sugar: 30g
Salt: 30g
Flour : 900g
Eggs: 1200g

Method

Combine the milk, butter, sugar and salt in a saucepan. Bring to the boil, stirring the whole time.

Add all the flour at once and stir hard. Keep going until the dough pulls away from the sides and a thin white film builds on the base of the pan. That film matters: it tells you the moisture has cooked off properly.

Transfer to a stand mixer fitted with a paddle. Run on low until the dough cools to around 40°C, about a minute. Don't skip this step. Add eggs to a hot dough and you'll start cooking them.

Add the eggs in batches of roughly three at a time, waiting until each addition is fully incorporated before adding the next. What you're looking for at the end: smooth, glossy, slow. When you lift the paddle and the dough falls in a thick, lazy V, you're there.

Transfer to a piping bag fitted with a 15mm star tip. Pipe éclairs approximately 135mm long onto lined trays.

Bake at 210°C with steam for 5 minutes. Reduce to 180°C, then finish at 165°C. Total baking time is around 28 minutes.

Baking times shift with every oven. What you're after is a deep, even golden colour and a shell that sounds hollow when you tap it. Once you've baked this a few times, you'll stop looking at the clock and start trusting what you hear.

If you still have some question feel free to reach out to @pasha.choux
Chef Pavel
Eclair at the Bay