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Mixing The Dough

Mixing The Dough

There are two stages of mixing choux pastry.

The initial melting of the butter in the water and stirring the flour into the boiling liquid.

Start by weighing water into your pan and melting the butter over a gentle heat.

While you’re waiting for the butter to melt, sieve the flour and salt onto a sheet of greaseproof paper.

Once all of the butter has melted, increase the heat under your pan to high and bring the liquid to a rolling boil as quickly as possible. Shoot the flour into the pan, remove the pan from the heat and beat the mixture together with a wooden spoon as quickly as possible.

When the dough comes away from the sides of the pan, you can stop beating.

Tip the dough into a large bowl, spread it around the sides to increase the surface and allow it to cool more quickly.

Beating the eggs into the cooled dough.

If you have a small amount of mixture (2 – 4 egg size) beating the eggs in by hand is quite easy. Anything over 4 eggs becomes quite tiring on the arms and electric beaters or a stand mixer will be a good thing to use.

Beat your eggs together in a jug and once the dough is cooled enough, you can start to beat the eggs into the dough a little at a time.

Once you have added some egg to your dough, the mixture will slide about in the bowl before it becomes incorporated. A non slip pad or damp cloth under your bowl will help to keep the bowl in place while you beat in the eggs. Once the first batch of egg has been incorporated, repeat with some more egg. As the mixture starts to absorb the eggs they will become easier to incorporate.

The important thing here is that you are looking for a dropping consistency in your mixture. This is when the mixture drops reluctantly off the spoon. Keep adding eggs until you achieve that stage. It could be that you have to add more egg or have too much egg, so need to leave some out.