Gluten Free Pâte à Choux

Gluten free baking has been on my mind a lot recently. Not because I’m gluten free myself. Personally I believe gluten is a miracle protein with attributes so close to magic that all the powers of modern food science have yet to produce a convincing facsimile despite the basically guaranteed fortune that awaits the first person to achieve it. In my opinion, a life bereft of the many products that contain or rely on gluten is a life I am simply not willing to live.

However, many of my dearest loved ones are gluten free. And since my go-to way of doing something nice for those I care about is to bake them something it has been a source of some consternation that I’m unable to do so for those people. It is a problem I’m working on. There are lots of brilliant people who are devoted to this problem like the author of the incredible book Promise and Fulfillment which is full of some of the most impressive seeming results for gluten free breads of all kind including baguette, croissants, fougasse, cinnamon rolls, hearth loaves and more. Or the author of The Art of Lamination II who has managed to create a gluten free croissant formula and method that produces results closer than anything else I’ve seen to actual world class vienoisserie, and on whose gluten free flour blend my recipe in this post is based. Though the above mentioned examples are impressive and heartening when it comes to the outlook of gluten free baking’s future, they also share something else in common: they’re really dang difficult. Not only are the actual skills needed to achieve the results they do pretty advanced, but even just the prep that goes into executing them can be almost labyrinthine in their complexity. For this reason, despite owning both of those books for… a while, I have not attempted anything out of either of them (except for some conventional vienoisserie out of TAoLII).

So it was in this context that I started looking for an entry point into gluten free baking with a somewhat lower initial layout of effort. Enter: pâte à choux. In case you’re not familiar, pâte à choux is a classic French pastry batter/dough that’s used to make eclairs, cream puffs, profiteroles, gougeres, Paris—Brest, religieuse, St. Honoré, and others. Its execution is a bit unusual comparison to more typical batters in that you cook the flour together with the liquid and butter before beating in egg. This allows it to expand tremendously when being baked, and it also bakes up hollow (or mostly hollow) which makes it perfect to be completely loaded with filling (like in cream puffs or eclairs).

I wondered if you could just make a one for one swap with a gluten free flour blend for the typical wheat flour and leave all the other ratios and procedures the same, and—spoiler alert—you can. But I’m getting ahead of myself. First, let’s talk about gluten free flour blends a little bit. When it comes to gluten free baking there are two typical approaches. The first aims to create a substance that can be used as a 1:1 stand in for all purpose flour in as many different applications as possible by blending different starches and gums. This approach sacrifices a bit of fidelity to the original glutenous products it is used to recreate in favor of simplicity and convenience. The second takes a very different tack. It uses extremely dialed in doughs formulated to work for exactly one product to produce the best possible results. These are often made with whole grains, frequently with a preferment or starter made specifically for the product you’re trying to make, and even emphasize milling your own flour. This approach focuses on quality above all else.

In my opinion, neither of these two methods are ideal. I think there is a middle ground to be had where you can formulate a gluten free flour blend that is dialed in for a particular cross section of the baked good population. Not a one-size-fits-all, but neither is it specific to just one bake. That's what I’ve attempted to do here by making a flour blend for pastries. It wouldn’t be good for a crusty loaf of bread or bagels, but it should be good for a number of different pastry applications including pâte à choux. So now that I’ve rambled on for almost a thousand words let's get to the actual content promised in the title. First the blend that I’m using in place of wheat flour. I’ve laid it out as a ratio so you can scale up or down as needed, but do note that these proportions are by weight not volume.

Gluten Free Pastry Flour Blend 

2 parts white rice flour

1.5 parts brown rice flour

2 parts tapioca starch

3 parts corn starch

1 part dry milk powder

0.1 parts xanthan gum

1. Whisk all ingredients together then sift through a strainer three times to ensure even distribution.

As I mentioned earlier, this is roughly pulled from the flour blend developed by Jimmy Griffin in The Art of Lamination II, but slightly tweaked for ease of use and adapted into the above ratios.

From here we can use any ol’ pâte à choux recipe we like, and simply change out the wheat flour for our GF pastry flour blend. Here’s the one I use:

Gluten Free Pâte à Choux

Active Time: 10 minutes

Total Time: 10 minutes (not including baking)

Yield: about 1.5 cups of batter

63 grams milk

63 grams water

3 grams sugar

2 grams salt

65 grams butter

75 grams GF pastry flour blend

125 grams (a little less than 3) eggs (lightly beaten)

Add milk, water, salt, sugar, and butter to a small saucepan. Place over high heat and bring to a low boil. Make sure you cut up the butter to ensure that it is fully melted by the time the liquid comes to a boil.

Once the mixture comes to a boil, dump in all the flour at once. Stir with a stiff wooden spoon until very sticky, slightly translucent, and fully hydrated (about 2-3 minutes), or until a probe thermometer reads 175º F. If you’re already familiar with making pâte à choux this is the step that’s most different from the traditional method. Don’t expect it to look like a wheat flour paste as it cooks here. It’s paler and much stickier.

Transfer to a mixing bowl or stand mixer with the whisk attachment and beat the cooked mixture on medium-high speed for about a minute to cool it down.

Once the mixture is cooled, start beating in the egg. Start with about 1/4 of the egg, beat in until fully incorporated, then add the next addition. You may not need all the egg. You want to add enough so that when you lift some of the batter out of the bowl with a beater or spoon and let it fall back into the bowl it leaves a triangle of batter behind on the utensil.

The telltale triangle of batter

Once you have achieved the proper texture your gluten free pâte à choux is ready to be shaped and baked into whatever you like. I bake at 400º F for about 15 minutes, but that is really personal preference. I do, however, find that the gluten free version of choux pastries bake a little bit faster than the typical versions so just keep an eye on them.

Delicious eclairs. My piping needs a little work, but the choux puffs well!

I was quite pleased with the quality of this gluten free pâte à choux. I made a Paris—Brest with my first batch, and to be honest I didn’t miss the wheat flour at all. Even tasting the baked choux by itself, the flavor is remarkably close to the original pastry. Using this formula, I was finally able to bake real pastry for one of my gluten free friends for her birthday. It’s always great to be able to give someone on a restricted diet something they thought they couldn’t eat anymore. I hope this post will help you do the same. And if it gets you inspired to up your pastry skills even further I recommend checking out our upcoming Pastry Boot Camp class coming up on Saturday, October 7 at 9am at Lincoln Square. Bon chance!