Pate a choux perfected
Pate a choux was one of the first things I learned how to make when I was 16 years old in my home country of France.
(Keith Hale/Sun-Times)
Now, 17 years later, as the pastry chef at NoMI, I can add thousands of eclairs (long and custard-filled), religieuses (two choux stacked one on top of the other) and Paris-brests (ring-shaped, split and filled with praline) to my repertoire. These represent all the French classic uses of one simple recipe.
What is pate a choux, you may ask? It is a light dough made with only butter, water, flour and eggs. When it is cooked, the steam “puffs” the pastry.
Once you begin making the dough, the technique needs to be perfected. And the only way to do this is with practice.
You boil water with butter and salt in a heavy saucepan. Add the flour all at once and mix with a wooden spoon until the mixture pulls away from the sides of the pan and looks a bit shiny.
The eggs are then added meticulously, one by one. The dough should not be too runny, with the perfect balance of moisture in the mix.
When I learned to make this in France at Desjardins Patisserie in St. Michel Sur Orge, I was making these pastries by the dozen.
Then I moved to Belgium and made the pate a choux 20 quarts at a time. My experience was tested, as we had to make it in a large mixer instead of by the traditional stovetop method.
In all the places I have worked all over the world, the recipe needs to be adjusted and tested. I now prefer to use milk instead of water because it adds flavor and produces a more caramel-colored pastry.
Convection ovens are the oven of choice, as the fan in them puffs the dough perfectly, but many pastry kitchens have deck ovens. So we would go back to the drawing board and use less flour in the recipe to increase moisture in the batter, creating more steam.
My travels and experiences and endless testing helped the evolution of my pate a choux. On the NoMI lunch menu, I have brought back one of my first creations, a version of the religieuse.
There are two choux — the top is filled with caramel cream and the bottom with hazelnut mousse, vanilla caramel and caramelized hazelnuts. Both choux are covered with yuzu praline glaze. A classic recipe, but layered with all the flavors of my travels and past experiences.
Frederic Moreau is the executive pastry chef at NoMI in the Park Hyatt Chicago, 800 N. Michigan.