Gruyère Gougères
Cheese puffs, with a fancier name.
I made gougères this week–I always make these when I’m having tomato soup.
You can play around with the cheese and herb options. Honestly, I make them with Parmesan more often than Gruyère, but Gruyère sounds faaaaancier, and if I have leftover Gruyère from some other recipe, this is where it's going. For herbs, I most often use thyme, but I've also used sage paired with white cheddar.
The base of these is a choux paste (a.k.a. pâte à choux), made by briefly cooking flour with liquid on the stovetop—this gelatinizes the flour, changing how the flour behaves. (It's very similar to the first step in making super-soft tangzhong breads, too.) Choux paste is the same base used for making cream puffs or eclairs. It’s easy to do and worth learning. I got this recipe, and learned about pâte à choux, from the Michael Ruhlman book Ratio. It’s a handy little book, I recommend it.
There are two ways I tend to goof these up:
The first is by underbaking them. They need to be pretty dry and firm to keep from collapsing once they're out of the oven. Don't beat yourself up if it takes you a couple batches to know what they look like when they're done-done.
The other way is by getting overeager with the cheese. If there's too much cheese, the weight will keep them from rising nicely. Whoops! I don't have a cheese weight limit in grams figured out yet, I'm still working on that. 15g is fine, but I don't know how much more. If they don't rise right, they may not cook through the middle.
But these aren't hard, don't let my past failures psych you out. Just learn from my mistakes!
Baked gougères should be eaten soon after they're made–ideally right away, but within a day or so is okay. Before long they'll turn sad and soft. The unbaked paste can be kept in the piping bag in the fridge for a couple of days, so I usually bake a them on demand as I'm having leftover soup.
Ingredients
- 1 cup water
- 1 stick butter, in tbsp chunks (6 tbsp also works)
- 1½ tsp kosher salt, or 1 tsp sea salt
- 120 g flour
- 4 large eggs
- ½ cup gruyere (or parmesan, or cheddar), finely grated
- fresh herbs, finely chopped
- white or black pepper
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 425°.
- Bring water, butter, and salt to a simmer over high heat. Reduce heat to medium, add flour, and stir rapidly. Keep stirring to cook the flour, gelatinizing it, until it reaches 165°-175°, a minute or two.
- Remove pan from heat to let the mixture start to cool. You want the mixture to be warm/hot, but not so hot that the eggs cook, under 145° is fine.
- Add the eggs one at a time, stirring rapidly until completely combined into the paste. Stir in cheese and herbs.
- Transfer paste into a piping bag. Pipe onto a parchment-lined sheet pan, about golf-ball-sized, in a 5 x 3 grid. Wet finger with water and press down the peaks. The paste is fine in the bag at room temperature for a couple hours, refrigerate after that.
- Bake at 425° for 10 minutes, then reduce to 350° and bake for another 10-25 minutes. They are not done until they look golden brown and dry.
- As soon as they are removed from the oven, use a sharp knife to spear each one, letting the steam out.
Here's a printer-friendly Google Doc version of the recipe:
