It’s always exciting when I set out to bake cakes with einkorn, which I used to bake in the bakery with Spelt or Gluten-free grains. Because, it’s not just about replacing the flour, which usually was the case when shifting from regular wheat to ancient wheats and spelt.
It’s actually far from that simple and it often takes me days or weeks to create a recipe that I’m truly happy with, when using einkorn.
However, my goal is simple. I just want to re-create all my old recipes from the bakery using einkorn instead of Spelt and gluten-free grains.
I simply prefer the taste of einkorn and it truly makes my day, to reflect on the fact that einkorn is the only unhybridized wheat. It’s just such a unique thought, this grain is made by God alone how beautiful is that!
Another important factor is that everybody in my family tolerates einkorn especially the home milled edition, where I mill the einkorn berries just before baking. This has changed quite a few things digestion wise for all of us.
So… I just had to make a “PÂTE À CHOUX” with einkorn and Holy Week seemed like the perfect time for this since it is an unleavened dough.
We don’t make or eat leavened bread/cakes during this week, we don’t even refresh our sourdough and trust me my sourdough looks sad because of that, how happy it will be when I refresh it back to life on Resurrection Day.
Leaving your sourdough without food to almost die and then bringing it back to life when the Lord is Risen, seems like a good idea. We truly missed our bread this week and Jesus is the bread of life, not to forget.
Hold onto that thought and let’s make some choux pastry!
Einkorn Choux Pastry
Equipment
- 1 Piping Bag
- 1 Piping Nozzle French Star (open) tip 14mm or Regular Round tip 20mm
Ingredients
For the Panade:
- 100 g Filtered Water/Mineral Water
- 100 g Raw/Whole Milk
- 80 g Butter in cubes (I use salted butter in this recipe but you can use unsalted too)
- 2 g Fleur de Sel (or fine Celtic sea salt)
- 3 g Demerara or Turbinado Sugar
- 160 g Einkorn Flour (You can use Jovial All-Purpose or home milled Einkorn)
For whisking into the Panade to make the Choux Pastry.
- 3-4 medium/large Whisked or Whole Eggs (If using home milled flour use 4 eggs if using Jovial use 3 eggs. Whether you prefer using whole or whisked eggs is up to you, it might be easier using whisked eggs as long as you don't pour it all into the dough at once)
Instructions
- Preheat your oven to 350℉. Cut the butter into cubes, whisk your eggs if you prefer them whisked and weigh off the rest of the ingredients.
- To make the "Panade" the base for a choux pastry, you have to pour milk and water into a saucepan and add the butter cubes, salt and sugar.
- Put your saucepan over medium/high heat until all of the butter is melted and the mixture boils slightly and creates a white foamy top.
- Do not remove the saucepan from the heat, simply lower the heat to low/medium and add all of the flour at once while mixing vigorously until the dough is fully combined, do not despair if it looks lumpy at first, just keep whisking vigorously like your life depended on it! It will change, I promise.
- In a minute or two it will look like this.
- On low/medium heat dry out the dough by flattening it with a spatula and turning the dough like I've shown below, repeat this motion again and again for 5 minutes and yes you have to do it for 5 minutes. So, set a timer and do not miss a minute of those 5 minutes. While doing this you should be able to hear a slight sizzling sound, this is not bad and do not be alarmed if there will be some dough residue that sticks to your pan either, that is how it is supposed to be, just keep working on the dough as shown below.
- Flatten the dough from one side of the pan using your spatula like this.
- Repeat the motion.
- Repeat until you have flattened the entire dough.
- Like this.
- Turn the dough.
- Then you get a dough ball and then you just repeat the above steps until your timer beeps!
- At this point the dough slips easily from the saucepan and you will be able to shake it into a doughball simply by shaking the pan.
- If the bottom of your saucepan looks similar to this, then everything is just as it should be. Do not worry about it, it is normal and you should not try to scrape it off when you transfer your dough from the saucepan to a mixing bowl. Just put some hot water in your pan and leave it for 30 mins to soak. Then it will be easy to remove with a sponge.
- Transfer the hot dough to a mixing bowl.
- I usually stir the dough a bit like this with a spatula, before I leave it to cool off. It speeds up the cooling process. The dough must be around 113-122℉ before you should add the eggs.
- Attach dough hooks to your handheld mixer or a paddle attachment to a stand mixer and add the 1st egg or similar to 1 egg of whisked eggs to the dough.
- Mix the dough on slow and then increase to medium speed. Stop when the dough has fully incorporated the egg and clean the sides of the bowl.
- Add the 2nd egg or similar to 1 egg of whisked egg and mix the dough on low and then increase the speed until the dough has incorporated all of the egg and remember to clean the sides of the bowl.
- Add the 3rd egg or similar to 1 egg of whisked egg and mix the dough on low and then increase the speed until the dough has incorporated all of the egg and remember to clean the sides of the bowl.
- If you are using home milled flour you will have a 4th egg to incorporate into the dough, just mix it in on low and medium speed and remember to clean down the sides of the bowl. Your dough will be ready now and looking similar to this. It should have a slight sheen and if you put a spatula into it, it will form a V that does not drip off immediately but slowly.
- This is how it should look
- Put the dough into a piping bag with a nozzle of your choice I use a French open star or a regular round tip for cream puffs.
- When the bag is properly packed, squeeze out any unwanted air bubbles like this.
- This is how your bag should look when it is ready for piping.
- Pipe your choux pastry in whatever design you have intended. Remember to leave enough space between each cake.
- If you are using "craquelin", you can place it on top of each of your cakes. If not you can make your cakes look cleaner by dabbing the tops with a wetted finger.
- Now it's time for baking and there is one very simple rule. DO NEVER EVER OPEN THE OVEN while your choux pastry is baking. Put your pastries into a 350℉ hot oven (without the fan on). Bake them for 35 minutes at 350℉ and then bake them for 15 minutes more at 300℉
- Your pastries will be beautifully golden brown when they are done after a total of 50 minutes. As long as you never open the oven during those 50 minutes. So that's about it, if you follow the recipe and the guidelines you will be able to make beautiful choux pastries like these.
Notes
I hope you will enjoy making these einkorn choux pastries at home. I have done my best to describe how I make these. If you have any questions, just write in the comments below or send me a message on Signal.
Have a Blessed day!
Much Love in Christ
P.S. all posts on this blog are written and photographed by Belle Frost, no AI has been used to generate content and all Copyright belongs to Maison Frost.
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