In this article we will talk about how to cook homemade eclairs. Step by step recipe read below. But first, a little theory. Choux pastry is plentiful. Three types of baking are distinguished among them: eclairs, profiteroles and shu. Relative to their base from the test. It is specially brewed. When baking, the dough swells due to evaporation of moisture, and internal voids are formed. The increase in product size also gave the name profiteroles (profit means "profit"). And the word "eclair" is translated from French as "lightning." Probably, the buns were given such a name because they swell so swiftly. Profiteroles and eclairs are necessarily stuffed with filling, often sweet (custard, protein, butter cream, condensed milk, chocolate). But you can find products stuffed with cottage cheese, mushrooms, minced meat. Shu, due to its small size (up to two centimeters in diameter), is served with broths and soups without filling - like bread or crackers.
Dough for eclairs at home: preliminary steps
Even a novice cook can do it. An important condition for a good custard dough - when baking, in no case should you open the oven doors. Another key to success is eggs. They should be at room temperature. Therefore, a few hours before we begin to knead the dough for eclairs at home, lay four eggs out of the refrigerator. Now we’ll start looking for two pots of suitable diameter. It is required that one can fully enter the other and stay stable at its bottom. At the same time, a small saucepan should contain all the dough. You have probably already guessed that preparations are underway for a water bath. We will use this cooking technique to brew dough for eclairs at home.
Steaming
Pour two-thirds into a large pan of water. Set it on fire. Dip into it less. Water should not spill over the edges of this container. Pour water into a small saucepan. But the amount determined by the recipe is two hundred and fifty milliliters (a glass). Cut into slices one hundred grams of butter. Add a pinch of salt. We wait until the heated water from a large pan melts the butter in a small one. This technique will not allow fat to burn. The oil will come in contact with water. Do not pull out a small saucepan. Pour there two hundred grams of white wheat flour. Here the most difficult begins. We need to stir the hot oil water with flour so that not a single lump remains. This should be done with a wooden spatula. A submersible mixer is also allowed. But they need to act very carefully so that the corollas do not spread the spray and flour throughout the kitchen. Numerous eclair recipes at home agree on one thing : the dough should be uniform, without lumps.
Kneading
Once the flour has completely combined with the oily liquid, remove the saucepan from boiling water. Knead the dough again. We work with a wooden spatula for about five minutes. So the dough, firstly, will cool faster, and secondly, it will become more elastic. Now it's time to hammer the eggs. We do this strictly one at a time and constantly knead the mass until completely homogeneous. Making dough for eclairs at home is not a problem, the main thing is not to rush and be patient. The mass should not be either liquid or excessively steep. The dough will blur when trying to give it shape, but also slightly reach for a spoon. By the time the batch is over, we should already have a preheated oven. Turn on the fire to two hundred degrees. Cover the baking sheet with parchment paper.
Planting
Now we are starting to bake our eclairs (we have already mastered the test recipe). Remember that the name cakes received from the property is rapidly increasing in size. Therefore, we place them on a baking sheet so that in the oven the products do not stick together in a single lump. Profiteroles can be planted on parchment paper with a regular tablespoon. But eclairs should have an elongated shape of sticks ten centimeters long. Therefore, we can not do without a pastry bag. There is no such device in the house? It doesn’t matter: a pastry bag will replace a regular durable plastic bag. We fill it with the test. Pinch the edges. Cut the tip off the cone. Voila! The pastry bag is ready to eat. Squeeze out the dough onto cooking paper. We form sticks five to seven centimeters long, leaving approximately the same distance between them. We send the eclairs to the oven for ten minutes. After that, reduce the temperature to one hundred and eighty degrees. Bake another twenty minutes. Only then can the oven door be opened.
Semifinished
Thus, we have obtained hollow buns. They should be uniformly golden, dry on all sides, and when tapped, the dough should make a dull sound, indicating the presence of voids inside. These "blanks" can be stored for quite some time - several months - in a freezer in sealed packaging. In case of unexpected guests, you just have to prepare a cream and fill it with ready-made eclairs. The dough recipe will allow it to stay fresh for several days - if you place the blanks in a tightly tied bag. But in any case - whether you will prepare cakes for serving immediately, or hold them for the time being - the finished products must be completely cooled. Since the cream, once in a hot environment, can behave unexpectedly.
Cooking stuffing
Classic eclairs contain custard in their delicate cavity. But this is not a firm rule. You can cook cakes with any other filler, fill them with boiled condensed milk, jam, chocolate-nut mass like Nutella. There are no ideas. Let us dwell on the recipe for Italian meringue. This cream is so gentle, almost weightless. With meringue you will get very tasty eclairs. Doing it is very simple, but you will need four hands. We mix one hundred thirty grams of sugar and forty milliliters of water. We cook the syrup to the degree of extreme thickening, when caramel threads begin to stretch behind the spoon. The second person at this time whips with a mixer two proteins. Foam should be resistant, but without solid peaks. Pour the syrup into the proteins in a thin stream, without ceasing to work as a mixer at the same speed. When the meringue becomes dense and shiny, you can add some kind of flavor - vanilla or essence.
Serving
Making a cream is half the battle. Now they need to stuff hollow buns. Eclairs recipes at home offer two options. The first is the simplest. Cut the bun in half, smear the eclair with a cream like a sandwich. The second method requires a confectionery syringe. And the cream in this case should be sufficiently elastic. We make a hole in the crust, introduce the filler. And the final touch is glaze. It can be chocolate, sugar, caramel. You can decorate the surface of the product with coconut, meringue or jelly.
Julia Vysotskaya: eclairs from the culinary star
And how does the famous culinary invite us to make cakes? She prefers to replace water with milk. In this case, you can do without a water bath - just heat up all the ingredients for the dough on low heat. Add some vanilla for flavor. When the dough becomes thick, remove it from the heat and, constantly mixing, introduce four eggs one at a time. Such buns should be baked at two hundred twenty degrees for the first ten minutes, and then kept at a quarter of an hour at a hundred and ninety Celsius. Creating eclairs step by step, you should pay attention to the cream. We have already said that there are many recipes from classic custard to pistachio or lemon. Vysotskaya proposes to make a cream for eclairs from cornmeal (25 g), three yolks and icing sugar (fifty grams). Beat all these ingredients to a thick white foam. We breed with a glass of milk. We put on the fire and bring to a boil. We start our eclairs with this warm cream. Very tasty!