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For me, the humble gougère, or cheese puff, perfectly expresses the genius of French cooking. It’s simple. The choux pastry is made of water, butter, eggs, flour, salt and cheese. Yet even in this minimalist form, a good cheese puff will blow your knickers off. And nothing goes better with wine.
I judge French restaurants by the quality of their gougères–only the most traditional places still serve them. They are old-fashioned, courtly, charming, and when made by expert hands, ravishing (witness the beauties served at the grande dame of French restaurants in America, La Grenouille). The last great French restaurant we visited, L’Espalier in Boston, did not serve gougères before the meal, although they made up for it with a delightful array of savory tidbits including a smoked gouda éclair, which was made with choux pastry.
So enamored am I that gougères appear more than once in my stories. London Broil finds Laura sampling the coriander-scented puffs at an Afghan restaurant run by a Francophile chef. And Laura’s lover James affectionately calls her mon choux, which means either “my pastry” or “my cabbage.”
Yet I have never before tried to make them. Yes, that’s right. I was The Forty-Eight (soon to be Forty-Nine) Year Old Choux Pastry Virgin. Time for deflowering (de-flouring?). The only problem is that I’m not much of a baker. Baking requires precision, which is not my forte in the kitchen. Still, the lure was great. The thought of having a theoretically unlimited supply of luscious gougères made me dizzy with desire. When I looked at some recipes, I thought that choux pastry might be manageable. It is much simpler than puff pastry, which calls for repeated folding and rolling (all of which must happen while it is kept well-chilled). And choux pastry can be used to make other decadent things, like cream puffs…
My first choux experience involved a recipe by venerable chef Alain Ducasse. Désastre! (Feverish flashbacks of losing my virginity to an older man who was far less attractive than the charming Ducasse…) Choux is supposed to be made by melting the butter with water or milk, then mixing in flour and cooking it briefly on the stove. Eggs are added to this warm mixture, one at a time. The resulting pastry dough is then piped or spooned onto the baking sheet. But my dough had the flaccid consistency of pancake batter. Obviously, something had gone terribly wrong.
I salvaged it by baking it in a muffin tin, since the dough could not hold its shape. The resulting “choux muffins” were delicious, redolent of cheddar, Bellavitano and blue cheese. The Long-Suffering Husband found them irresistibly tasty and polished off the batch with some soup I made. But they looked a fright.

This is NOT how gougères are supposed to look. Admittedly they smelled and tasted divine. But I had to commit violence to get them out of the tin.
Looking online, I saw that this is not an unusual problem for newbies, yet nobody seemed to have the solution. In fact, the making of choux is fraught with perils. If the proportion of butter to flour to eggs isn’t right, they won’t hold their shape and puff up. Some instructions suggest opening the oven door partway through, in order to keep them from falling. Others warn not to open the door. Some (Ducasse!) say to cook the dough 1 minute in the pan before adding the eggs. Others advise 10 or even 20 minutes on the stove, to ensure that the flour is fully cooked and develops its flavor. (With the wisdom of hindsight, I vote for the lengthy and assiduous attentions required to bring the dough to its pleasurable peak.) Some mix in the cheese; others put it on top, because cheese in the dough can make it less delicate. And then there’s the question of the egg wash…
In other words, there are as many recipes for choux as there are bakers of choux. Believe me. By now I have watched numerous B-rated videos (warning: explicit Butterfat Content). The one constant is that you have to use gobs of buttah. For my next attempt, I decided to make a half batch. I found an unassuming recipe by Chef John that called for 1/4 cup butter, 1/2 cup flour, 1/2 cup water, a pinch of salt and 2 eggs. Chef John seasons the puffs with 1/2 cup cheddar, a teaspoon of black pepper and a teaspoon of thyme. I decided to use sage instead of thyme because the sage in my garden is going great guns, and because I am a sage-lover.
I measured the butter with extra care this time, using a measuring cup (I also vowed to get a kitchen scale and stop messing about with cups!) After adding the flour, I cooked it well over ten minutes to make sure that it was dry and that the flour was nice and toasty. Now for the real test: the eggs!
The dough is always resistant to accepting the first egg. You have to keep working it in. At first the dough seemed thin and I almost despaired. Then, quite suddenly, it stiffened up under my spoon. That’s right, ladies. If you can coax that dough into a stiffy, you’re golden.
I didn’t bother piping it, but used a melon-baller to form the dough. I skipped the egg wash, and added cheese to the tops of the adorable little fellas, along with more pepper. I had to bake them a good 15-20 minutes at 400 degrees F, which is longer than most recipes recommend. But they say it’s better to overbake than to take them out too soon.
They say that your second time is likely to be much better than the first. I’ll drink to that. They also say that gougères will keep up to three days in an airtight container and that they freeze well. I notice that only a few hours after baking, the wee puffs lose their initial crispness, although the flavor continues to develop. So take your pick…
The perfect accompaniment for any pleasurable activity you have in mind.
Yum! Anything with cheese wins in my book.
Me too. The genius of these is that they taste so cheesy.
Cheese and Ducasse (hubby’s favourite chef) together in a post! I must absolutely ask my hubby-chef to prepare one of these choux. Mmmm…
Suddenly a drawer of my memory has opened and I hear a masculine voice in a film saying “mon petit choux”, but I don’t remember who or where 😦
Oooh, I would love to know which film. James sometimes says the very same thing 🙂
Great result LM!! De-flouring had me chuckling. This post had me reminiscing of my choux pastry lessons from cooking school. Having to pipe the mixture into the shapes of swans (yes, bloody swans!) for the final pastry exam. The key is to beat the eggs when the mixture has cooled and yes, when you have that shiny, glossy ‘stiffy’ type batter going on, you know you may (yes, may) have success. Love your free form balls (so to speak), piping sucks. I’ll drink to that.
LOL! Bloody swans! That is hard to imagine. Maybe my mistake in the first one was to put the eggs in too soon. Misled by videos where they cut the waiting time out and didn’t mention it, perhaps.
Found some almond meal in the store, so giving the cake a try today. It’s Bob’s Red Meal but I figured it was finer than anything I could get in my food processor which is really only a blender attachment.
From memory they were piped in two parts, the body and the neck/head. Then filled and assembled. Yes, just another useful life skill I have acquired. I think the Bobs will work a treat. I use quite a few of their other gf flour blends and they are great. I sieve all of my almond meal anyway. Have an ace baking day!
Congratulations! I’m not surprised gobs of butter are required. I made my own cinnamon buns once and was disappointed at the texture. Then I watched them make them at a bakery and they folded a stick of butter into the dough, kneaded it, rolled it, folded in a stick of butter, etc, about half a dozen times. Ahh, saturated fat, how I love thee. So what other cooking challenges remain to be met?
Today I am making Cheergerm’s peerless and flourless chocolate cake. Wish me luck 🙂
I make these all the time. People are always impressed by them, but they’re really not hard to make once you know what to expect. I always had the problem of opening the oven too fast and they would cool too rapidly and deflate. So now I cool them with the oven door ajar to keep them nice and puffy.
Instead of incorporating the cheese into the dough, I cut small slices of Grafton sage cheddar (if I’ve got it) in advance and cut a practically invisible slit into each gougers and just stick the slice inside. I know it’s cheating.
I tried piping it once and I agree with what cheergerm said, it sucks. I think they look better dumped on the baking sheet with a spoon anyway.
Very interesting about the oven door! I didn’t have that problem, but I’m making them again tomorrow for a party, so I’ll be sure to let them cool slowly.
Grafton sage cheddar would be heaven in these!!
I guess it’s true that everyone has a choux fail at the beginning. It’s hard to believe the variety of failures, isn’t it? Oh baking. You have to really love it.
And Grafton, Grafton. I’m going to VT in October and I plan on going to the Grafton store in Brattleboro where I know they have the little ends and pieces in a hidden corner for a mega discount. Can’t wait to get my hands on some real maple syrup too.
I can’t find anyplace in AZ that sells Grafton, so I usually end up using Cabot, which is good too. But something about the sage cheddar is especially good in these.
Yes, the combination of sage and cheddar is so savory. I can rarely find that type of cheese in Ohio, but luckily I have some excellent sage plants. Just about the only thing that really stood out this year in the garden…
Real maple syrup has no substitute! I’m lucky that we have lots of it here.
Ooooooooh! What a perfect finish to my day 🙂
I’m making another batch today. Can hardly wait 🙂
Me neither! I WANT SOME!!!
You make baking sound so sexy – you’re like new Nigella, without the drug problems 😉 And who cares what they look like as long as they taste GOOD! I’d love one now with my glass of wine!
Thanks! Didn’t know about Nigella’s drug problems. What was she doing, snorting foie gras? Must look it up.
They do taste lovely, but they’re very tricky to make until you’ve done it a hundred times. I had to throw a batch out last night and re-do them. (It was worth it.)
Yum – the most I’ve done is boil an egg lately 😉
Yeah, I think there was some scandal about her a while back! I might be mistaken…
Oh, wow, any film that involves food has me buying a ticket or pressing record. So much of my writing – whether fact or fiction – is woven throughout with cooking and eating and ignoring the dishes.
I adore these little fellas and if I’m out in a restaurant that serves them up beautifully, I will hunt down the pastry chef and plant a big one on him in thanks. Stunned silence usually follows, but I’m pretty excited to share my gratitude with food well cooked.
Yum, Linnet.
BTW, I sent your post to my chef brother to see if he wanted to weigh in on the matter. Or the batter. 😀
Ha, ha! You are probably a legend among pastry chefs as the phantom kisser!
I’m still learning the ropes on these. Made them last night and had to throw out the first batch. The second one worked but they were not as puffy as I wanted.
Wow 🙂
Thanks 🙂
Yummy! actually, I never saw “gougères” on a French menu 🙂
It looks like a “pâte à chou” http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goug%C3%A8re
If you can read French, I found this recipe too (and many others of course):http://fr.wikibooks.org/wiki/Livre_de_cuisine/Goug%C3%A8re
Thank you! Yes, it is pâte à choux. Interesting that they do not appear on menus in France, but in the US they have long been a signature of “good” French restaurants. I guess the ones in America feel a need to demonstrate their French pastry-making skills (though I rarely see cream puffs on their dessert menus, and that is the same technique). I saw in the Wiki article that these are considered a specialty of Burgundy. Didn’t know that either!
Even in traditional “good restaurants”, you won’t find gougères easily. Maybe in Bourgogne (Burgundy)
http://www.burgundyeye.com/restaurants/restaurants-1/eating-in-burgundy-a-taste-for-adventure/
http://www.bouchondupalais.fr/Pages/lesspecialiteslocales.aspx
Mmm. I could go for some of those eggs in red wine sauce 🙂