For cooking choux pastry will be required Wheat flour top grade, eggs, water (milk), butter (margarine), salt. A distinctive feature of choux pastry is its high viscosity. The dough is so viscous and elastic that the water vapor generated during baking cannot escape and form large voids inside the dough, which are then filled with various fillers, such as cream or whipped cream.

As it is clear from the above, the natural leavening agent of the 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 continuous stirring with boiling water mixed with oil and salt. During the boiling process, the starch will gelatinize; as a result, the gluten will be partially compacted in the raw dough.

Choux pastry requires strong flour with a high gluten content (40%). Only such a dough will turn out to be dense and elastic so that it can stretch without breaks when the volume of products 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 to be bulky. The moisture content of the choux pastry is very high, so products from it are molded only with the help of a pastry bag.

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 proteins of flour and gluten coagulate.

You should be aware that during the baking process, choux pastry loses almost half of its 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 the choux pastry with eggs. It is best to cook the choux pastry in a thick-walled cast iron cookware.

Pour the required amount of water into a clean dish, dip the sliced ​​butter into it, add salt and bring the water to a boil. Stir continuously in flour to get homogeneous mass without lumps, brew the dough for 1-2 minutes. After that, the hot dough is cooled to 60 degrees, after which the eggs are introduced with continuous beating.

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

Common mistakes in choux pastry baking

• If the pastry has insufficient rise, then the dough was too steep.
• If the baking is blurry, then the dough was runny, there were a lot of eggs, or the flour was not cooked enough during brewing.
• If the baked goods are baked onto the baking sheet, the baking sheet was not greased enough.
• If the bottom of the pastry is torn, then the baking sheet was greased too much.
• If the baking has settled in the oven, then the oven door was opened early or the products were touched early.
• If the baked goods have cracks on the top and sides, then there was an excessive temperature during baking.

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

Homemade baking secrets from different types of dough

Dough- one of the most capricious components. Not many can boast that baked goods are always tasty 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 shrug their shoulders in bewilderment, not understanding why the pies are made from yeast dough did not rise, biscuit not baked, but shortbread turned out to be stone. The quality of products depends not only on the accuracy of the amount of used components, 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 with a bad mood in the kitchen, let alone bake.

Perhaps some advice will seem obvious to someone, this does not mean that they are not so important. So, on your way to great baking, the following will help:

Yeast dough

Even dry yeast is best kept refrigerated and ALWAYS check the shelf life before each use. It's better to learn about expired yeast before baking and toss out the yeast alone than to try to cook something out of it and throw away the entire product. And also waste time and lose faith in yourself :)

Flour needs to be sieved several times before use. By the way, this applies not only to yeast baked goods... Sifting helps to remove unnecessary impurities from flour, breaks lumps, saturates the flour with oxygen, making the dough airy and the baked goods tender. If there is nothing to sift with, then the flour can be loosened with a whisk for beating eggs (not with strong whipping movements for a minute). Thus, it is not possible to remove impurities, but it is quite possible to break up the lumps and make the flour airy.

It is best to add liquid to flour, not vice versa. In a deep bowl in sifted flour, make a funnel and pour in a thin stream of liquid with one hand, and stir with a wooden spatula with the other. Firstly, it will help to avoid lumps, and secondly, the dough will not blur, which will lead to the temptation to add more flour, as a result the dough will be "clogged" with flour, which means that the baking will not turn out to be airy.

All ingredients should be at room temperature. This means that butter, eggs, sour cream and other components of the dough must be taken out of the refrigerator in advance, at least a couple of hours in advance. Baked goods yeast dough cannot be spontaneous, the temperature of the food must reach room temperature, and thoughts must tune in to work with the dough :). Melted butter is not a substitute for room temperature butter, and foods such as eggs cannot be warmed up even in the microwave. So the presence of a microwave will not save the situation. If you forgot to get food, it is better to postpone or abandon baking altogether, than to get upset about failure later and puzzle over why the pies did not work out.

Often recipes indicate the amount of flour “how much it will take”. It is most convenient to use some minimal amount flour for the recipe, and if in the process it turns out that there is not enough flour, add half a cup. Even flour from the same manufacturer, but from a different batch, may differ in quality. And if the previous time you used 4 glasses, then the next time you may need 4 and a half or even 5. If the dough interferes heavily, then there is too much flour. More milk needs to be added. Or another situation, when the exact amount of flour is indicated in the recipe, and you are cooking according to 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 the dough seems too runny, add a little flour to an acceptable consistency. In general, when using the recipe for the first time, it helps a lot. step by step photos or the author's notes. If your dough turned out to be sticky or with an unusual color, and in the photo you see the same thing, or the author notes that the dough should turn out to be sticky, then you are on the right track and it doesn't cost anything to change.

The amount of sugar in yeast dough is also one of the pitfalls of yeast baking. If there is too little sugar, you will not get a beautiful golden brown crust, and the cake will taste like bread, and not baked goods... If you add too much sugar, then 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 in accordance with the recipe. Or experimentally find the right amount of sugar. The path is long and expensive, but yours.

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

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

Shortcrust pastry

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

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

In almost all recipes from shortcrust pastry it is required to hold 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, collecting the dough into a single whole. 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 heats up quickly and begins to "melt". In this case, it is better to send a baking sheet with raw biscuits into the refrigerator for 10-15 minutes, and then from the refrigerator into 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 must be placed between two sheets parchment paper and roll out with a bottle filled with cold water.

Cookies from shortcrust pastry it is better to undercook than to overexpose in the oven. 2-3 extra minutes, and we get it soft biscuits from the oven, which, when cooled, turns into stone. Shortcrust pastry - only with a timer and just not being distracted by anything else.

Biscuit dough

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

Biscuit dough must be baked immediately after cooking. At this point, the oven should be preheated. If the dough is left even for 15-20 minutes, the dough will begin to settle and air baking will not work.

If you want to add fruit to biscuit dough, 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 over the remaining dough.

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

It is not true that the more soda, the more magnificent the product will turn out, and the more vanilla, the more aromatic. It is better to not pour baking soda and vanilla into the dough rather than pouring it.

And finally ..

Do you think there is more important points Which one to know best when working with a test? Then share with us. AND delicious pies will be provided :)

1. To prevent lumps from forming in the dough when kneading, water or milk should be added 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. Whisk the whites quickly if you keep them in the refrigerator beforehand and add a little lemon juice.
4. Yeast can be replaced with 0.5 cups of beer.
5. To make the dough elastic and come up faster, before kneading it, you should sift the flour.
6. So that the rolled dough can be easily transferred to a baking sheet, it should be screwed onto a rolling pin, sprinkled with flour, and then gently unrolled.
7. The dough is better suited if there are no drafts in the room.
8. When working with yeast dough, grease your hands with vegetable oil - then the dough will not stick to your hands.
9. To get shiny on the pie golden brown, you need to spread its surface with egg yolk.
10. For the yeast dough to rise well, all ingredients 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 cake or biscuit, the dough will immediately fall off and the quality of the finished product will decrease.
13. If flour product stuck to the bottom of a baking sheet or mold and cannot be removed, you need to put a 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 adding baking soda, then it must first be extinguished with vinegar or lemon juice. Otherwise, due to the soda, the product will acquire an unpleasant aftertaste. If the ingredients for the dough include dairy products, then extinguishing the soda is optional.
15. To make products from unleavened dough turned out to be delicate and fragrant, you need to pour 1 teaspoon of liqueur or brandy into the dough.
16. If the yeast dough does not fit in any way, then low-quality yeast was used during kneading. You can try to put the dough in a warm place or heat the container with the dough in hot water up to 30-40 degrees. If this does not help, add fresh yeast dough to it.
17. To make the yeast dough come up faster, you need to add a glass of vodka to it.
18. When using margarine for kneading the dough, it is not necessary to add salt to the dough; there is already a sufficient amount of salt in the margarine itself.
19. If the dough is for butter cake the recipe should not be very cool, it will be difficult to work with it. This dough will stick to your hands. To avoid this, cover it with oiled baking paper and then roll it out.
20. When baking sweet yeast dough buns, grease them first. butter or an egg and only then sprinkle 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 put in the dough strictly according to the recipe. If you do not report it, the product will not brown, but only dry out. If you shift it, the product will brown very quickly, but inside it will remain damp.
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 steep than for pies that will be fried in a pan.
25. Delicious and air biscuit it turns out if you put a little starch into it when preparing the dough.
26. When making any dough, it should be borne in mind that with an increase in its fat content (too a large number of butter), the consistency of the dough also changes greatly. It is getting closer to sandy.