To prepare choux pastry you will need premium wheat flour, eggs, water (milk), butter (margarine), and salt. A distinctive feature of choux pastry is its high viscosity. The dough is so viscous and elastic that the water vapor formed during baking cannot escape and forms large voids inside the dough, which are then filled with various fillings, such as cream or whipped cream.

As is clear from the above, the natural leavening agent for choux pastry is water vapor, which cannot escape during baking. To obtain the choux pastry of the desired consistency, it is necessary to brew the flour with boiling water mixed with butter and salt while continuously kneading. During the welding process, the starch will gelatinize, as a result, the gluten will be partially compacted even in the raw dough.

For choux pastry you need strong flour with a high gluten content (40%). Only such dough will be dense and elastic, so that it can stretch without tearing as the volume of the product increases during baking.

Eggs should be added to the choux pastry only after it has cooled to 60 degrees, otherwise the eggs will curl and the baked goods will not turn out voluminous. The humidity of choux pastry is very high, so products from it are formed only using a pastry bag.

The choux pastry is baked at 180-200 degrees for half an hour so that the products have time to warm up to the temperature at which the flour and gluten proteins coagulate.

You should know that during the baking process, choux pastry products lose almost half of their weight.

Choux pastry recipe

Ingredients: premium flour - 0.5 kg; butter - 250g; eggs - 16 pcs; water - 1.3 cups; salt on the tip of a knife.

Recipe: Choux pastry is prepared in two stages: brewing flour with water, oil, salt and kneading choux pastry with eggs. It is best to cook choux pastry in a thick-walled cast iron bowl.

Pour the required amount of water into a clean bowl, add the butter, cut into pieces, add salt and bring the water to a boil. Continuously stirring in flour to obtain a homogeneous mass without lumps, brew the dough for 1-2 minutes. After this, the hot dough is cooled to 60 degrees, after which the eggs are introduced while continuously beating.

Baking trays are lightly greased with oil and, using a pastry bag, the future pastry of the desired shape is formed on them so that there is a gap of 3-4 cm between adjacent products. Choux pastry products are baked at a temperature of 200 degrees for 30-40 minutes. Do not open the oven during baking.

Common mistakes in cooking choux pastry

• If the baked goods do not rise enough, the dough was too stiff.
• If the baked goods turn out to be vague, it means the dough was liquid, there were too many eggs, or the flour was not cooked enough during brewing.
• If the baked goods stick to the baking sheet, the baking sheet was not greased enough.
• If the baked goods have torn bottoms, it means the baking sheet was too greased.
• If the baked goods settle in the oven, it means the oven door was opened early or the products were touched too early.
• If the baked goods have cracks on the top and sides, it means there was excessive temperature during baking.

ATTENTION! The information presented on this site is for reference only. We are not responsible for possible negative consequences of self-medication!

1. To prevent lumps from forming when kneading the dough, you should add water or milk to the flour, and not vice versa. Otherwise the dough will be very difficult to knead.
2. The yolks should be ground warm with a few tablespoons of sugar.
3. Egg whites can be whipped quickly if you keep them in the refrigerator in advance and add a little lemon juice.
4. Yeast can be replaced with 0.5 cups of beer.
5. To make the dough elastic and rise faster, you should sift the flour before kneading it.
6. So that the rolled out dough can be easily transferred to a baking sheet, it should be rolled onto a rolling pin sprinkled with flour and then carefully unrolled.
7. The dough will work better if there are no drafts in the room.
8. When working with yeast dough, your hands should be lubricated with vegetable oil - then the dough will not stick to your hands.
9. To get a shiny golden brown crust on the pie, you need to spread its surface with egg yolk.
10. In order for the yeast dough to rise well, all ingredients included in the composition must be at room temperature, including eggs and butter.
11. Fresh yeast should be diluted with warm milk. If you use hot milk for this purpose, the yeast and flour will brew.
12. If you open the oven too wide or slam the door while baking a pie or biscuit, the dough will immediately fall and the quality of the finished product will decrease.
13. If the flour product is stuck to the bottom of the baking sheet or mold and cannot be removed, you need to place the hot baking sheet or mold on a well-moistened kitchen towel and leave for 10-15 minutes. Then the product can be easily removed from the mold.
14. If the recipe requires the addition of baking soda, then it must first be quenched with vinegar or lemon juice. Otherwise, the soda will cause the product to have an unpleasant taste. If the ingredients for the dough include fermented milk products, then it is not necessary to extinguish the soda.
15. To make unleavened dough products tender and aromatic, you need to pour 1 teaspoon of liqueur or cognac into the dough.
16. If the yeast dough does not fit in any way, it means that low-quality yeast was used during kneading. You can try putting the dough in a warm place or heating the container with the dough in hot water to 30-40 degrees. If this does not help, you need to add fresh yeast to it.
17. To make the yeast dough rise faster, you need to add a glass of vodka to it.
18. When using margarine to knead dough, it is not necessary to add salt to the dough; the margarine itself already contains a sufficient amount of salt.
19. If the dough for a butter pie according to the recipe is not very stiff, it will be difficult to work with. This dough will stick to your hands. To avoid this, you need to cover it with greased baking paper and only then roll it out.
20. When baking sweet buns from yeast dough, you must first grease them with butter or egg and only then sprinkle them with sugar, otherwise all the sugar will go into the dough.
21. When baking choux pastry products, do not grease the baking sheets with oil; it is better to sprinkle them with flour. Otherwise, the delicate choux pastry may crack.
22. Sugar should be added to the dough strictly according to the recipe. If you do not add it, the product will not brown, but will only dry out. If you transfer it, the product will brown very quickly, but the inside will remain raw.
23. To find out if the dough is baked, you need to pierce it with a wooden stick or toothpick. If it remains dry and clean, the product is ready.
24. For pies baked in the oven, the dough should be kneaded more steeply than for pies that will be fried in a frying pan.
25. A very tasty and airy sponge cake is obtained if you add a little starch to it when preparing the dough.
26. When making any dough, it should be taken into account that when its fat content increases (too much oil), the consistency of the dough also changes greatly. It becomes closer to sand.

Secrets of home baking from different types of dough

Dough– one of the most capricious components. Not many people can boast that their baked goods always turn out delicious and beautiful. This area of ​​cooking is especially challenging for beginners. The dough must be understood and felt. Even when using a proven recipe, something can go wrong, and often housewives just throw up their hands in bewilderment, not understanding why the pies are made from yeast dough didn't get up biscuit not baked, but shortbread turned out to be stone. The quality of products depends not only on the accuracy of the quantity of components used, but also on their quality, temperature, whipping speed and even on your mood. Yes, yes, I am absolutely sure that there is nothing to do in the kitchen if you are in a bad mood, let alone bake.

Some tips may seem obvious to some, but this does not mean that they are not so important. Here are some tips to help you on your way to great baking:

Yeast dough

Even dry yeast is best stored in the refrigerator and ALWAYS check the expiration date before each use. It's better to find out about expired yeast before baking and throw away just the yeast than to try to make something with it and throw away the whole product. And also waste time and lose faith in yourself :)

Flour must be sifted several times before use. This, by the way, applies not only to yeast baking. Sifting helps remove unnecessary impurities from flour, breaks up lumps, saturates the flour with oxygen, making the dough airy and baked goods tender. If there is nothing to sift with, then the flour can be loosened with an egg whisk (with gentle beating movements for a minute). This will not remove impurities, but it is quite possible to break up lumps and make the flour fluffy.

It's best to add liquid to flour, not the other way around. In a deep bowl, make a funnel in the sifted flour and pour in the liquid in a thin stream with one hand, and mix with the other using a wooden spatula. Firstly, this will help to avoid lumps, and secondly, the dough will not spread, which will lead to the temptation to add more flour, as a result the dough will be “clogged” with flour, which means the baking will not turn out airy.

All ingredients should be at room temperature. This means that butter, eggs, sour cream and other dough components must be removed from the refrigerator at least a couple of hours in advance. Baking from yeast dough cannot be spontaneous, the temperature of the products must reach room temperature, and thoughts must be tuned to working with the dough :). Melted butter is not a substitute for room temperature butter, and foods like eggs cannot even be heated in the microwave. So having a microwave won’t help the situation. If you forgot to get the ingredients, it’s better to reschedule or give up baking altogether than to be upset by the failure and wonder why the pies weren’t a success.

Recipes often indicate the amount of flour “as much as it takes.” It is most convenient to use a minimum amount of flour for the recipe, and if during the process it turns out that there is not enough flour, add half a glass at a time. Even flour from the same manufacturer, but from different batches, may differ in quality. And if the previous time you used 4 glasses, then next time you may need 4 and a half or even 5. If the dough is difficult to mix, then there is too much flour. Need to add more milk. Or another situation when the recipe specifies the exact amount of flour, and you are preparing this recipe for the first time. Trust your sixth sense. The author of the recipe could have made a mistake, or used flour of a different quality. If it seems that the dough is too liquid, add a little flour until it reaches an acceptable consistency. In general, when using a recipe for the first time, step-by-step photos or notes from the author are very helpful. If your dough turns out sticky or has an unusual color, and you see the same thing in the photo, or the author notes that the dough should turn out sticky, then you are on the right track and there is no need to change anything.

Amount of sugar in yeast dough also one of the pitfalls of yeast baking. If there is too little sugar, you won’t get a beautiful golden brown crust, and the pie will taste like bread, not like pastries. If you add too much sugar, the fermentation process will be slow and the cake will not bake well inside. In this matter, it is better to trust someone's experience and add the amount according to the recipe. Or find the right amount of sugar experimentally. The path is long and expensive, but it’s yours.

If you grease your hands with vegetable oil, it will be easier to knead the dough. But the dough with a surface greased with vegetable oil will rise better and the surface will dry out less.

To transfer a thin layer of rolled out dough, you need to sprinkle it with flour, roll it onto a rolling pin and roll it in the right place.

Shortbread dough

The biggest enemy of cooking shortcrust pastry– long kneading. This leads to the fact that the finished products are not crumbly. Shortbread dough and is called this because products made from this type of dough should turn out to be as crumbly as sand cookies. In order not to knead the dough for a long time, but at the same time all the ingredients are well mixed, you need to first combine the liquid components (eggs, butter, molasse, etc.), separately mix the dry ones (flour, soda, spices) and only then carefully mix the first and second .

If shortbread dough it turned out too sticky - the cookies will spread and you risk getting one continuous cake on the baking sheet. If the dough is too dry and does not come together, crumbling into crumbs, the cookies will not disperse, resulting in shapeless stone lumps. Shortbread dough It should be like wet sand, not too sticky and easy to mold.

In almost all recipes from shortcrust pastry You need to keep the dough in the refrigerator for about an hour. Sometimes you even need to refrigerate the dough overnight. This is a very important point. The butter hardens, bringing the dough together. When we take the dough out of the refrigerator and work with it for some time, forming cookies, then in a hot kitchen, especially with the oven on, the dough quickly heats up and begins to “melt.” In this case, it is better to put the baking sheet with raw cookies in the refrigerator for 10-15 minutes, and then from the refrigerator to the oven. This way, the dough will harden again and the cookies will not “float” in the oven.

To roll out the sticky shortbread dough, it should be placed between two sheets of parchment paper and rolled out with a bottle filled with cold water.

Cookies from shortcrust pastry It’s better to underbake than to overcook in the oven. 2-3 extra minutes, and we take the soft cookies out of the oven, which turn into stone as they cool. Baking from shortcrust pastry - only with a timer and only without being distracted by anything else.

Biscuit dough

For biscuit dough Proper whipping is very important. How to properly beat eggs to stiff peaks is described. It is best to beat the yolks and whites separately at high speed. And only then it’s better not even with a mixer, but with a wooden spatula to mix the whipped whites and yolks. All dry ingredients need to be mixed separately, and then add half to the eggs, mix a little and then add the rest. Stir just to combine.

Biscuit dough must be baked immediately after cooking. The oven should be preheated by this point. If you leave the dough even for 15-20 minutes, the dough will begin to settle and airy baking will not work.

If you want to add fruit to biscuit dough, then it is better not to mix the fruit with the dough, but pour half of the dough into the mold, carefully lay out the pieces of fruit, and pour the remaining dough over them.

Biscuit dough does not like drafts, loud sounds, or frequent opening of the oven. After baking, let the product cool slightly in the mold and only then remove it from the mold.

It is not true that the more soda, the more fluffy the product will be, and the more vanilla, the more fragrant. It is better to add too little baking soda and vanilla to the dough than to add too much.

And finally..

Do you think that there are still important points that are better to know when working with the test? Then share with us. And delicious pies will be provided :)