Sifting flour, Choux pastry

I learned something today.

I had always thought sifting flour was about either 1) accurate measurement or 2) removing clumps and/or a lighter result.

I also knew that when I combined dry ingredients, I often sifted them together so they were evenly distributed.

Well, turns out that (*if* this is true, that is) sifting flour (as a sole ingredient) is to make sure that the gluten is evenly distributed! Who knew? (ok, I know some of you knew)

I'm making my first choux pastry tonight, I'm so excited! This is my all-time favorite pastry, and I have never even considered trying to make it until I saw Alton Brown do it and it seems so painfully (painlessly?) easy now.

I'm not even going to worry about what to do with them until I see that they come out right.

You are gonna develop a habit here. It is so, so easy that you'll want to do it all the time. Eclairs, Cream Puffs.....I filled little eclair shaped things with whipped salmon and cream Cheese. I gained 15lbs after I made my first choux.


I had to go cold turkey and haven't made it in years. How many eggs does your recipe use.....:evilgrin:

First pizza, now choux.

I now realize why I like cooking but have avoided baking. It all makes sense now. Just a few things I read here:

http://www.hub-uk.com/tallyrecip01/recipe0047.htm

and now I understand: I don't like to follow recipes, and I modify everything. Apparently that's bad in baking, unless you really understand what you're doing.

So, I will follow a recipe exactly, and will even break out my electronic postal scale to weigh my flour (and will sift thrice)

I'm debating between these two very similar recipes:

250ml water
125g butter
150g flour
4 eggs

or Alton Brown's:

1 cup water
3/4 stick butter (6 tablespoons)
1 tablespoon sugar plus 1/8 teaspoon salt
5 3/4 ounces flour
1 cup eggs, about 4 large eggs and 2 whites

I'm sure they are almost identical, but I'm going for the precision, I'm going to treat this like a lab experiment.

I'm a bit conflicted about the flour, so for this first attempt, going with the AP flour. Alton said to use bread flour, and it seems Emeril also used bread flour for choux -- but somewhere else I was reading about pastry, it said that you didn't want high gluten flour.

Once I saw that this was the dough for funnel cakes, that was it. I mean, eclairs and cream puffs would have been enough, but funnel cake too? I'm doomed.

because the gluten forms the structure that traps air and allows some pastries to rise. Choux is one of those, along with most yeast raised doughs.

All purpose is plenty high in gluten for this purpose.

Low gluten flours like cake/pastry flour is suited to those things that you don't want to develop large air pockets, like cakes. You want a fine, tender crumb there, not breadiness. You can do cakes with all purpose flour or even bread flour, but you have to be extremely careful about undermixing rather than overmixing and it still won't be as fine as cakes made with pastry/cake flour.

I do better when i understand the *why* of recipes :)

Choux pastry is the basis of cheese puffs. Mix in grated cheese and deep fry them.

(don't know how it holds up after a night in the fridge, but I'll find out)

I did fry some of the batter and put powdered sugar on it, to see how funnel-cakey it was -- of course, it was good, but seemed too light for funnel cake.

Cheese puffs! one batch with cheddar, the other with parmesan :)

Not 100% sure, but it should be good after a rest in the fridge.

Ugh... those things are terrible! I mean, terribly addicting, and terribly easy to eat too many, and just plain horrible!

I didn't even fill them with anything, either (although some curry chicken salad sounds like a good plan).

Now I think I should have used bread flour -- the high gluten content is so that more water can be absorbed by the flour, allowing for more steam and a better rise.

Maybe the comment I read about pastry and gluten didn't take this into account.

I'm thinking of filling some of these with tapioca, my favorite pudding/creamy thing -- is that weird?

One of my favorite having folks over for brunch dishes is to make large donut shaped Choux. Small Pizza Size with a hole in the middle.

After baking, cool, slice in half and fill with chicken salad or scrambled eggs with chives and caviar, or even a tuna salad with a little mango chutney. I think a curried chicken salad sounds lovely.

I've filled Choux with fruit and whipped cream, cannoli filling (mascarapone and whipped cream, vanilla and a dash of rum), sloppy joes, ice cream........Whatever!!!!!!

Knock yourself out!