Award-winning pastry chef Jean Marc Diop shares this easy-peasy recipe for melt-in-your-mouth gougères. They’re the perfect canapé if you’re entertaining guests, but we love cracking open a bottle of wine and nibbling on them in front of a movie (and that way, you don’t have to share!). Miam!
Ingredients
- 250g cold water
- 250g whole milk
- 11g fine salt
- 180g unsalted butter
- 300g strong flour (T55)
- 10 eggs
- 220g grated Comté cheese
Directions
1Heat your oven to 175C (350F).
2To make the panade (batter), place the water, milk, salt, and butter in a medium saucepan. Heat to a boil.
3Break the eggs in a separate bowl.
4When the mixture starts to boil, while still on the stove, add the flour at once and mix vigorously with a spatula. The result should be a firm dough.
5Remove the saucepan from the stove and start adding the eggs in three batches, until you have a soft and smooth mixture.
6 Add the grated cheese and mix well (at this stage, the mixture should be luke warm).
7Spoon mini-heaps or form small balls with a pastry bag.
8Add a bit of grated cheese on top before placing them in the oven. Bake for at least 20 minutes.
What is “strong flour”! — do you mean high protein flour like bread flour? That’s winter wheat flour. Pastry flour is lower protein.
Hi Emilie!
While most pastries would call for low-protein flour, choux pastry calls for strong flour, also known as bread flour or high-gluten flour. This allows it to maintain its structure and create a puffed-up shell for fillings, like éclaires and profiteroles, or these cheese puffs!