The French dough behind profiteroles, éclairs, chouquettes and gougères: cooked on the stove, beaten with eggs and baked until hollow and crisp. Made with Canadian all-purpose flour and large eggs, weighed so the dough holds its shape.
I love everything made with choux, sweet or savoury. If I had to pick, it's the ones filled with cream: a crisp shell that gives way to cold whipped cream or vanilla pastry cream. Once the puffs are baked, the filling is the easy part: whipped cream takes five minutes.
The one thing that's hard to find here is the pearl sugar for chouquettes, so crush sugar cubes instead: they still crunch. For the filling, Canadian 35% whipping cream whips up firm and holds well inside a puff, so that part is no harder than in France.
Choux is the dough every French pastry shop runs on: profiteroles, éclairs, chouquettes with their crunchy sugar, and gougères when you beat in cheese. It's made in a saucepan, not a mixer, and the oven does the rest by turning the water in the dough into steam that puffs it hollow. What changes in Canada is the eggs and the flour, and the eggs matter most.
Weigh the eggs, don't count them
A Canadian large egg is about a French medium, but eggs vary by 10 g either way, and the egg quantity decides whether the dough holds its shape, so beat them, weigh them and aim for about 250 g. Add the last 50 g a little at a time, and stop as soon as the dough looks right.
Why choux fail
Too wet: too much egg, or flour that wasn't dried long enough in the pan. The puffs spread flat in the oven instead of rising.
Underbaked: they look golden but the walls are still soft inside, so they collapse as they cool. Bake until they're deep golden and feel light when you lift one.
Making it in Canada
The 3 French ingredients, and what to buy for them in Canada.
Farine T55→All-purpose flour (about 13% protein)
T55 is around 10–11% protein; Canadian all-purpose is about 13%. For choux that's a plus: the stronger dough holds its shape and puffs higher. It also absorbs a little more liquid, which is one more reason to add the last egg slowly.
🛒 Robin Hood All Purpose and Five Roses All Purpose both list about 13% protein. Both are at Walmart and Sobeys; Five Roses is also at Super C.
Œufs moyens (4 à 5)→Canada Grade A large eggs, about 250 g beaten
A Canadian large egg weighs about 50 g out of the shell, so 250 g is usually 5 eggs, sometimes a little less. Weighing matters more than the count: 20 g too much egg is enough to make the puffs spread.
🛒 Any carton marked Large works. A kitchen scale that reads in 1 g steps is all you need.
Sucre perlé (for chouquettes)→Crushed sugar cubes
Pearl sugar keeps its crunch in the oven because the grains are big and hard. Crush sugar cubes in a freezer bag with a rolling pin until the pieces are about the size of a lentil, and sift out the powder, which would just melt.
🛒 Pearl sugar is hard to find in Canadian supermarkets. The 'sugar pearls' sold for cake decorating are a different product and aren't made to bake. Plain white sugar cubes are in the sugar section of every supermarket.
Good to know: Regular 80% unsalted butter and 3.25% whole milk are what this dough needs; European-style butter adds nothing here. Oven temperatures are for a conventional oven; with convection, lower each by 15°C.
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Choux Pastry
Pâte à choux
The French dough behind profiteroles, éclairs, chouquettes and gougères: cooked on the stove, beaten with eggs and baked until hollow and crisp. Made with Canadian all-purpose flour and large eggs, weighed so the dough holds its shape.
Prep time
20 min
Cook time
30 min
Resting time
30 min
Total time
1 hr 20 min
Servings
8
10 minutes drying in the switched-off oven, then about 20 minutes cooling on a rack before filling.
Ingredients
Original recipe: 8 servings.
Instructions
Heat the oven. Heat the oven to 200°C (400°F), conventional setting. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.
Boil the liquid. Put the water, milk, butter, salt and sugar in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Bring to a full boil once the butter has melted.
Add the flour. Take the pan off the heat and tip in all the flour at once. Stir hard with a wooden spoon until a smooth ball of dough forms.
Dry the dough. Return the pan to medium-low heat and stir for 1–2 minutes, until a thin film forms on the bottom of the pan and the dough looks glossy.
Cool slightly. Transfer the dough to a bowl or a stand mixer with the paddle. Stir for 2–3 minutes to let the steam out, so the eggs don't cook when you add them.
Beat in the eggs. Add the beaten eggs in four or five additions, beating well after each. Stop when the dough is smooth and shiny, falls from the spoon in a thick ribbon and leaves a V-shaped tip behind. You may not need all of the last egg.
Pipe. Spoon the dough into a piping bag with a 1 cm plain tip, or a freezer bag with a 1 cm corner snipped off. Pipe 3 cm mounds about 4 cm apart. Smooth any peaks with a wet fingertip.
Bake. Bake 10 minutes, then lower the oven to 180°C (350°F) and bake 18–22 minutes more, until deep golden and light when lifted. Keep the oven door closed for the first 20 minutes or the puffs will collapse.
Dry and cool. Turn off the oven, prop the door open with a wooden spoon and leave the puffs inside 10 minutes so they stay crisp. Move them to a rack and let them cool completely, about 20 minutes, before filling.
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Notes
Makes about 40 to 50 puffs piped 3 cm wide, enough profiteroles for 8 people.
No piping bag? Use a large freezer bag with a 1 cm corner snipped off, or drop the dough with two spoons. Spooned puffs come out rounder and rougher, which is fine for chouquettes.
For chouquettes, brush the piped mounds with a little beaten egg and cover them thickly with crushed sugar cubes before baking.
For gougères, beat grated cheese into this dough and leave out the sugar.
Pipe the unbaked mounds onto a tray and freeze them. Once firm, store them in a freezer bag and bake from frozen, adding 5 minutes.
Baked puffs that soften can be crisped again for 5 minutes at 180°C (350°F).
To fill them with cream: whip 500 mL cold 35% whipping cream with 40 g icing sugar and 1 tsp vanilla to firm peaks, then pipe it into the hole in the base of each cooled puff, or split them and spoon it in. That fills about 40 puffs.
For pastry cream instead: whisk 4 egg yolks, 80 g sugar and 40 g cornstarch, whisk in 500 mL hot whole milk, then return to the pan and whisk over medium heat until it boils and thickens, about 1 minute more. Chill it covered, with plastic touching the surface, for at least 2 hours, and whisk smooth before piping.
Fill cream puffs as close to serving as you can, at most 2 hours ahead, and keep them in the fridge: the shell softens once the filling goes in.
Course: Sauces & Basics · Cuisine: French · Adapted for Canadian kitchens
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