Previously, on tastingmenu.wordpress.com –
* https://tastingmenu.wordpress.com/2020/12/19/a-french-laundry-style-chocolate-mousse/
A long time ago, at a university far far away…..
…there used to be an Italian eatery/bakery called Mazzotta’s corner of College and Broad Street in Middletown, CT. They’ve since relocated to the outskirts of the city (see: https://www.middletownpress.com/news/article/Mazzotta-s-closes-after-23-years-11901747.php). One of the food memories that left quite an impression was their legendary chocolate mousse puffs.
During these times, I was thinking about how I could remake this food memory and it occurred to me that Chef Thomas Keller’s Bouchon (p. 299, 300) had a recipe for profiteroles/pate choux to make the puffs. Reading the recipe over, it made 48 1-1/2″ wide puffs and so I thought about making a microbatch of these. I found a decent online recipe writeup for this at:
https://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/cream-puffs-with-vanilla-ice-cream-and-chocolate-sauce-231345
Get that first knob of butter
Primary pate a choux preparation station (room temperature butter)
So to resize the recipe as a microbatch portion (1/4 recipe), my ingredient list would look like:
1/4 c water (boiling!)
1 T + 1 t butter (room temperature, cut into pieces)
1/32 t salt
1/4 c all purpose flour
1 egg
1 t sugar (I think the filling itself would be sweet enough, and without the sugar, it would also have savory applications)
In the process of studying how to make this pastry, I had a conversation with my mother’s best friend (who used to make these all the time for the holidays). She made the assertion that it was that it was ok to use not necessary to use a neutral flavored oil instead of butter (sacrebleu !?!?). She also concurred that the sugar should be left out of the dough so as to make it flexible for savory or sweet applications. The other piece of advice I picked up from her was the assertion to make sure the dough was room temperature before adding the beaten egg(s) [the dough should be just warm to the touch], otherwise the dough would cook the eggs and leave and egg-y taste in the finished result. The other interesting surprise was that she said to use the appropriate sized spoon to put scoops of dough on to the parchment covered baking with the comment “not everyone has piping bags and nozzles”. Not having a stand mixer (who’s got the money and the storage space for one of these monsters?), I thought I’d use my hand beater and then hand mix it the rest of the way as in Julia Child’s Mastering The Art Of French Cooking (p. 176-180).
There’s a nice article on the science of this pastry here: https://foodcrumbles.com/the-science-of-choux-pastry-in-profiteroles/
Additionally I found some preparation tips here: https://thebakingpan.com/pate-a-choux-tips/
As a part of preparation, I would need to beat one egg in a measuring cup (with a spout) and set aside (more on that later).
final pate a choux mixing station with 1 whole egg beaten and a food thermometer
I would then need to start with room temperature butter cut into pieces as well as boiling hot water. That way I could melt
boiling hot water over room temperature butter (technique technique technique)
almost there – just had to keep shaking the sauce pot on high heat
the water/butter combination with little loss of liquid in the cooking/evaporation process.
ready for the flour!
At that point, it would be time to dump all the flour in at once. And then I would have to put some elbow grease in and vigorously
bringing the choux base together; once the dough came together had to keep stirring like making French scrambled eggs; dropping the heat to 50% and the later to 27% for about 5 more minutes
mix the dough with a wooden spoon until the dough pulled away from the sides of the pan and the bottom of the pan is clean, with no dough sticking to it. The dough needed to be glossy and smooth but still damp. I would need still need to do this for about 5 more minutes (maybe lowering the heat as necessary so that the dough wouldn’t color). I’ve been told a thin coating
almost ready to add the egg part of the process
would form on the bottom and sides of the pan. When enough moisture has evaporated, steam would come from the dough and there would be a nutty aroma of cooked flour.
Out of the saucepot and checking if the dough temperature is low enough to add the egg.
I now would need to move the pâte à choux to the mixer bowl and mix for a few seconds to release some of the heat from the dough (apparently, I would need to get the temperature down to 180 degrees on an instant read thermometer). It supposedly would take about a minute or so do that.
From the measuring cup, I could now measure out 2 T of the beaten egg and add it to the mixing bowl (a bit at a time) and run my electric handmixer to incorporate it (as it would turn out, using that was bad idea – the dough nearly broke apart). I ended up going back the wooden spoon and rubber spatula, scraping down the sides of the bowl as necessary.
After adding the first 2 tablespoons of beaten egg – remix and merge the dough
To check to see if I added enough egg, I would need to lift some of the dough with a rubber spatula, turn the spatula to let it run off – it is supposed to fall off the spatula very slowly; if it doesn’t move at all or is very dry and falls off in one clump, I would need to add more beaten egg. Another test from the pâte à choux tips website would be to: take a bit of dough between your thumb and forefinger and pull them slowly apart. The dough should form a stretchy string about 1 – 2″ in length long. If the dough has not reached this stage beat in 2 or more tablespoons of whole egg, adding a little at a time until the dough is finished.
Is the choux dough ready?
So now, how to cook the dough? A couple of things was observed. From the pâte à choux tips website, it was commented that the dough bakes into a light, airy puff almost 3 times its original size. Chef Keller mentioned that the original recipe would be disks about 1 1/2″ across and just under 1/2″ thick on the Silpat-lined baking sheet, leaving about 1 1/2″ between them. That meant these puffs might get to 4.5″ in expanded size. So in order to correctly set that up, I would use a trick found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ltu-ILo7rY (Bon Appetit, see time index: 2:42-3:04). I would butter the bottom of the baking tray, dusting with flour and then marking the butter dusted tray with a 1 1/2″ pastry cutter/mold ring where each puff would land.
Getting the baking tray ready.
I did end up using the plastic ziplock bag filled with the choux dough as in the mentioned video (see time index 3:04-3:46) to get portions of the choux dough onto the sheet using water dipped chopsticks to nip off each amount. I then dabbed my finger in a little water to tap down (as best I could any ‘peaks’).
ready for the oven
Into a preheated 450 degree F oven the tray would go onto the middle level rack (on top of my baking stone) to bake for 10 minutes, turn the sheet around, turn the oven down to 350°F, and bake 15 minutes more (suggests 5 more minutes on top of that for a total cook time of 30 minutes). NOTE: the baking sheet would go into the oven with the long side of the sheet facing one’s self. Why did I nix the “turn the sheet around”? I got told from my mother’s best friend to keep the oven CLOSED or the puffs
trying to get a look through the provided oven light and the glass oven window
would collapse!
resting after out of the oven
Once the puffs were done, I would take it out of the oven and let the puffs rest to room temperature. The pâte à choux tips website also addressed the steam issue post-baking where the residual steam needed to be released from inside the puffs. So, I imagine poking a hole at the top of the puff with a toothpick might be enough to take care of that issue.
The day before making these pâte à choux shells, I chose to make another batch of the the French Laundry chocolate mousse with unsweetened chocolate anticipating this adventure. Once the creampuff shells were cool enough, I got one to the cutting board, tipped it on it’s side and carefully cut it open with a serrated bread knife so as not to break the newly made shells. Into the creampuff I placed a 1 tsp quenelle of the chocolate mousse, recap’ed the shell and dusted the top with confectioner’s sugar.
Time to try recreating the chocolate mousse creampuff from Mazzato’s of Middletown, CT
A quick taste test confirmed all the elements I wanted were there. I think I will remake this dish next weekend or the one after with a few changes:
- instead of the 1/2 c of sweetener in the 100% chocolate for the mousse, I think I’d lower the sweetener down to 2 T + 2 t
- get the dough down to 145 degrees F before adding the eggs
- pipe 3″ rings of the pate choux (overall yield would be around 6 creampuffs)
Overall, I was pretty happy with the results. Maybe as part of a future tasting menu dessert course, I could do 1 1/2″ puffs with perhaps Morimoto’s sweet potato cake and fresh fruit. In the meantime, I’m looking forward reacquainting myself with the nice large chocolate mousse puffs from years ago!
Observation
Apparently cream puff shells can be made ahead and kept in an airtight container in the refridgerator for about 2 days. According to https://foodchannel.com/2011/how-do-i-store-cream-puff-shells , the shells can be re-crisped by baking them uncovered in a 300°F for about 5 to 8 minutes. Obviously the re-crisped shells need to be cooled to room temperature before filling.
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