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| A More Perfect Cream Puff | A More Perfect Cream Puff |
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| It has been years since my husband has even looked up when I announce that I’ve got a crush on a pastry chef — it happens too often — but when I proclaimed my affection for the designer Todd Oldham, he wanted to know why. Simple: his beautiful inner seams. | It has been years since my husband has even looked up when I announce that I’ve got a crush on a pastry chef — it happens too often — but when I proclaimed my affection for the designer Todd Oldham, he wanted to know why. Simple: his beautiful inner seams. |
| I’d seen a video of the designer in his studio, surrounded by stacks of lush, intricately worked fabrics. As regal as the materials were, only some were destined to be seen; the rest were to become the flip sides of his creations, with hidden Cupid’s arrows of inner seams, stitched with a craftsman’s passion and a mathematician’s accuracy. It’s the kind of care that draws me to pastry chefs too. | I’d seen a video of the designer in his studio, surrounded by stacks of lush, intricately worked fabrics. As regal as the materials were, only some were destined to be seen; the rest were to become the flip sides of his creations, with hidden Cupid’s arrows of inner seams, stitched with a craftsman’s passion and a mathematician’s accuracy. It’s the kind of care that draws me to pastry chefs too. |
| Pastries don’t truly have flip sides — all that’s important about a pastry is on view (or will be after the first bite) — but I consider dough an epicure’s inner seam. Pastry is an art of parts, and it’s dough that builds a pastry, sets its character, determines its structure and shape and contributes to its texture and taste. And yet it rarely gets its due: Everyone loves a filling, but not everyone appreciates the dough that holds it. | Pastries don’t truly have flip sides — all that’s important about a pastry is on view (or will be after the first bite) — but I consider dough an epicure’s inner seam. Pastry is an art of parts, and it’s dough that builds a pastry, sets its character, determines its structure and shape and contributes to its texture and taste. And yet it rarely gets its due: Everyone loves a filling, but not everyone appreciates the dough that holds it. |
| Lately I’ve become a one-woman band beating the drum for desserts’ supporting cast: the sturdy pastry that hugs the apples in a dumpling, turnover or pie; the crust that holds a jiggly lemon cream; the slender finger of pâte à choux, the dough that contains the cream in an éclair, or the balloon of that same dough that hides the filling in a cream puff. | Lately I’ve become a one-woman band beating the drum for desserts’ supporting cast: the sturdy pastry that hugs the apples in a dumpling, turnover or pie; the crust that holds a jiggly lemon cream; the slender finger of pâte à choux, the dough that contains the cream in an éclair, or the balloon of that same dough that hides the filling in a cream puff. |
| Every time I make a dough, I think of a pianist practicing scales: The exercise is basic, done daily and known so deeply that the work could be left to the memory in our fingers, but repetition and intimacy reveal nuances. | Every time I make a dough, I think of a pianist practicing scales: The exercise is basic, done daily and known so deeply that the work could be left to the memory in our fingers, but repetition and intimacy reveal nuances. |
| These days, the object of my admiration and borderline compulsion is pâte à choux, or what we call cream-puff dough. I’ve always thought the name shortchanged the dough, since pâte à choux is the key to a universe of pastries. It’s the base of the religieuse, a cream-puff snowman with a fondant ruff resembling a nun’s collar; gâteau St. Honoré, an elaborate homage to the patron saint of bakers and pastry chefs (its hallmark is chevrons of cream encircled by puffs sporting shiny caramel tops); croquembouche, a pyramid of cream-filled puffs in a spider’s web of caramel; éclairs, of course; beignets; churros; profiteroles (part ice-cream sandwich, part sundae); and more. | |
| Arriving in France with Catherine de Medici’s pastry chef, Popelini, the dough has been around for almost 500 years. The recipe relies on only four ingredients — water (or other liquid), butter, flour and eggs — is neither sweet nor salty and is cooked before it’s baked, making it a rarity in the pastry canon (the name pâte à choux evolved from the French for hot dough, pâte à chaud). Most remarkable, it comes into the 21st century little changed from when it was born. | Arriving in France with Catherine de Medici’s pastry chef, Popelini, the dough has been around for almost 500 years. The recipe relies on only four ingredients — water (or other liquid), butter, flour and eggs — is neither sweet nor salty and is cooked before it’s baked, making it a rarity in the pastry canon (the name pâte à choux evolved from the French for hot dough, pâte à chaud). Most remarkable, it comes into the 21st century little changed from when it was born. |
| Over freshly baked cream puffs at Hen & Heifer, a tiny shop in Guilford, Conn., that sells pastries with flown-in-from-Paris looks, Whang Suh, the chef, told me he still uses the pâte à choux recipe he learned in culinary school. Pierre Hermé, the revered Parisian pastry chef, hangs on to the one he learned as an apprentice in 1976. And moi? I worked with Hermé and love his recipe. | Over freshly baked cream puffs at Hen & Heifer, a tiny shop in Guilford, Conn., that sells pastries with flown-in-from-Paris looks, Whang Suh, the chef, told me he still uses the pâte à choux recipe he learned in culinary school. Pierre Hermé, the revered Parisian pastry chef, hangs on to the one he learned as an apprentice in 1976. And moi? I worked with Hermé and love his recipe. |
| Everyone’s recipe for pâte à choux is almost like everyone else’s; still, looking closely at cream puffs — my standard for judging the dough — considering their give, pulling them open, inspecting their custardy interiors and then tasting them fresh and free of filling: each one is slightly different. Like kids required to wear school uniforms who find little ways to look a touch sassier and stand out, the best pastry chefs push the dough closer to their own vision of it. | Everyone’s recipe for pâte à choux is almost like everyone else’s; still, looking closely at cream puffs — my standard for judging the dough — considering their give, pulling them open, inspecting their custardy interiors and then tasting them fresh and free of filling: each one is slightly different. Like kids required to wear school uniforms who find little ways to look a touch sassier and stand out, the best pastry chefs push the dough closer to their own vision of it. |
| Requesting the counsel of two excellent ones, Suh and Neil Robertson, a master of technique from Crumble & Flake in Seattle, who spoke to me by phone at 5 a.m. after he’d already spent a few hours in the kitchen, I set about to do something I hadn’t done in decades: refine my cream-puff recipe. | Requesting the counsel of two excellent ones, Suh and Neil Robertson, a master of technique from Crumble & Flake in Seattle, who spoke to me by phone at 5 a.m. after he’d already spent a few hours in the kitchen, I set about to do something I hadn’t done in decades: refine my cream-puff recipe. |
| I swapped out one of the whole eggs in my dough for a white, to add strength and a modicum more crispness to the shell (merci, Robertson); I added an extra egg, so that the dough was softer, smoother and richer (thank you, Whang Suh); and I lowered the baking temperature (another hat-tip to Robertson). I added a spoonful of sugar to the dough, so it would be delicious without a filling and more compatible with the craquelin (the streusel-like cap that’s an ingenious modern-day addition to puffs); and I didn’t reach for my pastry bag to shape the puffs but grabbed a small cookie scoop — easy and automatically precise. | I swapped out one of the whole eggs in my dough for a white, to add strength and a modicum more crispness to the shell (merci, Robertson); I added an extra egg, so that the dough was softer, smoother and richer (thank you, Whang Suh); and I lowered the baking temperature (another hat-tip to Robertson). I added a spoonful of sugar to the dough, so it would be delicious without a filling and more compatible with the craquelin (the streusel-like cap that’s an ingenious modern-day addition to puffs); and I didn’t reach for my pastry bag to shape the puffs but grabbed a small cookie scoop — easy and automatically precise. |
| In the end, I built a better cream puff. Did anyone who ate them notice the changes? Nope. Do I care? Not at all. Gazing at dozens of my roly-poly, quite adorable pastries, I’m as content as any couturier would be running her fingers along an elegantly constructed inner seam. That the puffs are better for the work I’ve done on them is a private pleasure: a baker’s secret. | In the end, I built a better cream puff. Did anyone who ate them notice the changes? Nope. Do I care? Not at all. Gazing at dozens of my roly-poly, quite adorable pastries, I’m as content as any couturier would be running her fingers along an elegantly constructed inner seam. That the puffs are better for the work I’ve done on them is a private pleasure: a baker’s secret. |
| Recipe: Craquelin-Topped Cream Puffs | Recipe: Craquelin-Topped Cream Puffs |
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