“No milk!” : Norbert Tarayre shares his tip for always obtaining a very crunchy choux pastry

Chef Norbert Tarayre likes to share his most delicious recipes. After his homemade sauerkraut, he tackles one of the French’s favorite pastries: choux pastry!

“Pâté à choux is like macaroons: we always have the recipes, but we also have a lot of mistakes” explains the chef. But that was before knowing the iconic chef’s good tips! Because you need a helping hand to succeed in this preparation: “choux pastry, you have to practice making it fairly regularly, ideally twice a month” judges the cook. This dough allows you to make simple or cream puffs, but also chouquettes and the famous éclairs, but also offers savory recipes such as dauphine potatoes.

“It’s a pastry to be made with a line, you can’t catch up or hide if the recipe is destabilized” explains the chef. Here are all his tips for succeeding at home like a pro!

To make perfect choux pastry, you will need:

But to have this very crispy appearance, the chef uses a choux pastry recipe with exclusively water. “No milk or mixture here” confirms the chef in the introduction to his video. It is in fact this type of recipe that we use for cakes and other snacks, the use of milk having a tendency to soften the cabbage more quickly, especially when they are garnished with a pastry cream which will provide moisture to the pastry. “The water will evaporate and the dough will leave a very brittle, very dry cabbage” confirms the cook. Likewise, to succeed in this recipe, do not neglect the importance of proportions and take the time to weigh the eggs.

Preheat the oven to 180°C. Then melt the butter in a saucepan filled with water. Add the spices (salt, sugar and Tonka bean) and let heat up, but be careful, do not boil the liquid. Indeed, water being volatile, evaporating too quickly will cause the preparation to lose mass and therefore reduce the quantity of dough! Then weigh the eggs in a salad bowl and whisk them well to break them up and make them liquid. Once the butter has melted, mix with a wooden spoon and incorporate the flour to make a panade off the heat then dry off the excess moisture. Objective : “make the starch work” explains the cook.

Then transfer the panade to a salad bowl to cool. Pour in the eggs gradually to “let the dough drink” specifies the chef. Cover, pierce a few holes and set the salad bowl aside for a few minutes. You can then transfer the preparation into a piping bag and make choux pastry or even éclairs as you wish!