Who knew choux pastry could be so difficult? Savour hosted guest chef Christophe Adam back in July & eclairs are his specialty. He produces 2000 eclairs a day for sale in each of his outlets & each day they sell out. Apparently his eclairs are perfect & show no cracks or malformations, so that was the expectation for us. Unfortunately, the shape of eclairs is so dependant on your piping skills & oven. Savour has two fan forced ovens & when Christophe Adam baked his eclairs, only one shelf in an oven with five shelves gave eclairs to his standards.We had no chance!
Ideally, choux pastry is baked in a moist oven until the shape is set. The oven temperature is then dropped & the flue opened to allow the éclair or puff to dry out.
We produced a few different flavoured fillings for our eclairs - pastry cream, coffee pastry cream, chocolate pastry cream, chocolate mousse, salted caramel buttercream & Chantilly cream (cream sweetened with sugar & vanilla bean).
Decorative effects included chocolate tiles, chocolate with a transfer sheet melted over the éclair top & a coloured croustilliant, which is similar to shortbread & is baked with the choux giving the surface a crumbled effect.
Photo: front to back
- éclair with coffee pastry cream filling. Dipped in chocolate & decorated with popping candy coated with coca butter, chocolate tile, chocolate curl & chocolate flower.
- éclair with a chocolate backed transfer sheet melted over the top of the éclair. Filled with caramel pastry cream
- éclair filled with chocolate mousse, 3 strawberry jelly spheres & Chantilly cream. It is topped with baked on red croustilliant. This is decorated with a shaped chocolate tile patterned with a transfer sheet.
Religieuse are another form of choux pastry & consists of a small choux bun sitting on a larger bun. It supposedly resembles a nun's habit.
The bottom bun was filled with chocolate pastry cream & the smaller top bun was filled with salted caramel buttercream. It was decorated with piped lengths of the salted caramel buttercream, fondant & a chocolate flower.
Hi Natalie, disparate for your advice. Have been attempting christophe adam's eclairs recipe but am failing. They seem to puff fine but them towards the end they seem to shrink a little and on taking them out, they collapse inwards on the bottoms. I've tried his oven temp recommendations at 240-250 degrees preheat, turn off 10mind, then bake at 160 or 180 degrees(I tried both) for total 40mins, still collapsed. Finally even attempted to just preheat at a random 200 degrees and baking them straight away at 180 degrees fir full 35-40mins. No luck again. Since you actually were lucky enough to attend a workshop by the msn himself can you help me with my problem?
ReplyDeleteHi Unrefined polish, sorry about the delay in getting back to you. I don't actually check the blog anymore, it was my husband that stumbled across your question. I didn't actually attend the course with Christophe Adam, but rather the Savour teachers taught a class using his recipes from the classes he did there in July. From that class, the teachers piped straight onto the tray, so I'm guessing he did that. No greasing of trays or anything. Try this first, as I would think no greasing means the éclair sticks to the tray eliminating the concave bottom. The eclairs had to be removed from the trays by pushing a scraper under them. The oven is also extremely important. A deck oven with no fan is best. When Christophe tried baking his eclairs in Savour's fan oven, there was only one shelf position that gave acceptable eclairs. If you're using a fan oven, maybe you can turn the fan off. We were given the following suggestion for baking in a fan oven: 10min at 170 degree Celsius, then 15min at 150 degrees, then 15min at 120 degrees. I haven't tried it myself as yet. The teachers also said that Christophe's temperatures are only suitable for an oven that retains heat. His baking instructions were: Pre-heat oven to 260 degrees Celsius. Place trays in & turn oven off. Once the choux has risen & is coloured golden brown, switch the oven back on to 160 degrees for approx. 20min. You may find also that you only have a particular position in your oven that gives you the result you're after. They sound a lot like macarons - every oven is different & involves a lot of trial & error. Hoping this helps.
ReplyDeleteNatalie
Thanks Natalie, will try your advice.
ReplyDeleteHi Unrefined Polish, don't know if you have had success yet with your eclairs. I have just added to the blog a post regarding the start of online classes at Savour. There is a subscription fee involved, but you do get to view one class as a free trial. They have a demonstration of a toffee éclair showing production of the choux paste, preparation of the tray, piping & baking. The greasing of the trays is different to Christophe Adams tray prep, but hey, you've got to do what works, don't you? It wouldn't be his recipe either, as his paste is slightly "wetter" than standard recipes. Thought I'd let you know.
ReplyDeleteRegards Natalie