Petits choux

Blurred baked petits choux 30/12-2012

This dish is actually very famous in Italy. Every patisserie in Milan offers these fantastic mignons and out of any mignon, these are my favorite. In Italian they are called bignè.

I have tried to make them at home when I was a little girl with hardly any positive result. Now I got the urge to give it another try. Found the recipe in my Montersino confectioner's school CD and thoughts might even try it for this year's New Year's Eve dinner.

Ingredients
165g Butter (unsalted)
185g Water
175g Flour (weak, with as little proteins as possible, and very refined)
Pinch of salt
25g Whole Milk
270g Eggs

Instructions
Put water and butter in a big pot and bring to boil and melt.
Important tip: make sure to put butter in small pieces in the pot so it melts before the water cooks. If it is not melted by then remove from the stove and make sure it does. The reason is you do not want too much water to vaporize as it would modify the proportions in the recipe.
Add flour.
Important tip: make sure the water cooks up thoroughly before pouring in the whole flour at once.
Mix with a wooden spoon with a very quick movement until the whole dough detach from the pot.

Dough out of the Kitchen Aid treatment 30/12-2012

Put in the Kitchen Aid using the butterfly mixer.
Add the milk while mixing.
Then add a few eggs at the time until absorbed. Check before adding the last egg that the dough is not too soft. The dough should look somewhat as custard. It might be even necessary to add some additional egg to reach the right dough.
On a baking plate distribute melted butter. Then dry it up with paper as the utter needs to be as little as possible in order for the guys to be able to grow.

Piped dough ready to bake 30/12-2012

Pipe the dough with a round pipe making sure that the starting point is the plate and going up  (not from the top as you would expect.
Important tip: do not use baking paper under them as they need to stick to the surface in order to grow properly in the oven.
Bake at 220 degrees Celsius until golden.
Important tip: use oven without ventilation for a professional result and an even surface.




Note to self: CD 10 - Pasta per bignè