Category: Pastry

Reader Gregory has been out picking persimmons and wants to know what causes the sour, pucker-y taste you get when you bite into one that isn’t quite ripe. Gregory, that’s a really great question. Tannins are responsible for that. They don’t have a taste or an aroma, rather they create a physical sensation known as “astringency”. It happens when phenolic compounds in the tannins combine with proteins in saliva. Little friction-inducing clumps of protein and other debris are created where ordinarily there is smooth lubrication. For the eater, it all adds up to a puckering feeling of dryness in the mouth, which can be downright off-putting.

Yes, they call it the sand pen, but imagine the possibilities with colored sugars. I’d love to draw on some cakes and cookies with one of these things!

Both maybe? Choux formulas are pretty standard in the proportion of flour, eggs, liquid and fat. Where they sometimes differ is in the type of liquid they call for: some say milk, others say water, some say a combination. Does it make a difference?

Nope, that’s not an obscure choux-based sweet, it’s Pastry household reality. The girls have a case each, though quite mild because of modern-day vaccinations. Still it’s going to put a bit of a kink in the works I think. Blogging will occur as best it can between applications of calamine lotion.

What choux batter reminds me of the most is a groovy bubble-blowing goo from the 70’s called Super Elastic Bubble Plastic (made by Wham-O!). It too starts as blob of putty-like material, but due to its extreme plasticity (and elasticity), it can be blown up into huge bubbles. I wish that stuff was still around. Sadly it was taken off the market in the early 80’s after the killjoys of the world pointed out that it gave off noxious fumes. Since when did those ever hurt anybody?

Salammbos are obscure pastries, mostly forgotten about now: choux puffs filled with kirsch-scented pastry cream and glazed with caramel and pistachios. They were created in Brussels for the 1890 premiere of Ernest Reyer’s opera Salammbô, which was an adaptation of the novel of the same name by Gustav Flaubert. Here in the States we know Flaubert mostly for Madame Bovary. Salammbô was his next novel, a piece of historical fiction set in ancient Carthage. It was published in 1862.

Pastry types just call it choux for short. The word literally means “cabbage” in French, and if you’re wondering how a pastry dough (batter, really) made of eggs, butter and flour ever got that name…I’ll tell you later.

Pastries made with choux dough are among the greatest exemplars of mechanical leavening known to the baking world. Should you be rusty on what exactly “mechanical leavening” means, it’s shorthand for steam power. Laminated doughs like puff pastry employ it, soufflés and angel food cakes employ it. Yet none of them achieve increases in volume like choux, a walnut-sized dollop of which will inflate to roughly the size of a lemon in the oven — and almost perfectly hollow to boot. No wonder people like to fill choux pastries up with things like whipped cream.

Most of us only think about choux batter when we want to make an éclair. However it has all sorts of fun, quick-and-easy applications, some of which I’ll try over the next couple of days. Projects are TBD…so stay tuned!