choux pastry

garylong snipped-for-privacy@lycos.com (gary) wrote in message news:...

I do not see the point.....Could you explain further about your way of making choux without the preparation of the roux by having first the fat and water to the rolling boil? If I had to make a choux pastry even with prepared choux pastry mix I usually prefer hot water. to do the same thing.. Besides at such temperrature the dispersion of the ingredients is much better. The keyword here is starch gelatinization that is critical for the choux mix structure. that is best descibed as an emulsion of flour/ fat, water and eggs stabilized by the gelatiination of starch and partial denaturation of flour protein) and that can be only attained if you allow such things to happen in the roux preparation. A choux premix in comparison is a mixture of pre- gelatinized flour, egg solids, etc. So even if you just use water at body temperature you can still be assured that the product will come out satisfactorily. But to my experince the choux premix is never the same in taste as the scratch made product. I had tried a few times to convert my scratch recipe to a premix using the functional ingredients found in the food research lab. It did result in a sattisfactory choux but is not completely identical to the sractch recipe. And among the score of pre- mix companies who supplied me choux pastry premixes for evaluation only one or two firms( found in UK) were able to make almost similar to the original scratch recipe..And their products were more expensive descouraging time constrained but costs conscious pastry chefs to use it.

Roy

unsalted butter for the roux, temp to be maintened when adding egg (37.5)

That is reasonable.. but .even if you use butter you still had to prepare it in a classical way( initially boiling the fat with water, then stirring in the flour until it cleans the side of the pot).Cool it down from warm to lukewarm depeding upon the fat characeristics,,, but this stage is not a big deal... Only pastry apprentices and beginners worry about that the 'tempered' roux temperature is higher or lower.. The physical chemistry involved during the creaming and emulsification with eggs remains the same. But the extent of mixing that the choux batter undergo will not( usually) cool dowm much below blood heat.Eventhough it cooled lower than body temperature if the emulsification was properly done and made up properly( in the end it will come out satisfactorily). The keypoint here is that you allowed the starch granules to expand during cooking( roux preparation) and the gluten to be partially modified that will allow it expand properly in the oven. Roy

I do apologize,

I`ve tried the gougeres recipe at different temperatures now (had to make a shed load for a buffet) and the recipe comes out fine every time, I was given the tip at catering college and i now think my tutor is full of shed. Thankyou for your persistance in correcting my roy.