Chapter 30 · Sugar, fat, salt and leaveners in baking
30.6 Steam as a leavener: cream puffs and popovers
Cream puffs and popovers rise on steam, with no yeast or chemical leavener at all. Both are made with little gluten development. The recipes below are small batches, meant for practicing the method.
Cream puffs
▶ Lecture 1▶ Lecture 2The paste for cream puffs holds 2 tbsp. butter, ¼ cup water, ¼ cup sifted flour and 1 beaten egg, for 5 medium puffs. Making them shows how much a cream puff's success depends on the emulsion in its paste.
- Heat the oven to 425°F.
- Bring the butter and water just to a boil, then take the pan off the heat and tip in all the flour at once.
- Stir fast until the paste pulls away from the pan and gathers into a ball around the spoon.
- Let it cool a little. Beat in the egg in two parts, beating well each time.
- Drop tablespoons of paste onto an ungreased baking sheet. Do not add paste to puffs already on the pan.
- Bake 20 minutes at 425°F, then 10 minutes at 325°F. Turn the oven off, pierce each puff in the side with a sharp knife, and leave them in the oven 10 minutes more.
- Cool, then fill.
Fill them with a vanilla pudding.
- Mix ¼ cup sugar, 1½ tbsp. cornstarch and ⅛ tsp. salt, and stir in 1 cup milk gradually.
- Cook and stir over medium heat until thick, then 1 minute more on lower heat.
- Off the heat, stir in 1½ tsp. butter and ½ tsp. vanilla extract.
- Let it cool.
Popovers
Popovers are a pour batter: ½ cup milk, 1 egg, ½ cup sifted flour and a little salt, for 4 medium popovers.
- Heat the oven to 425°F and get the popover pan ready. A cast-iron pan is greased and then preheated; a coated steel pan is greased but not preheated.
- Beat the ingredients with a rotary beater until smooth, and pour into the cups.
- Bake 20 minutes at 425°F, then 15 minutes at 325°F. Turn off the oven, make a slit in each popover with a sharp knife, and leave them for 10 minutes.
- Serve warm, with butter and jam.
What a good one looks like
| Cream puffs | Popovers | |
|---|---|---|
| Size | Three to four times the volume of the paste | Up to five times the volume of the batter |
| Outside | Uneven surface; evenly golden brown | Uneven shape; deep golden brown |
| Inside | Hollow, a little moist | Hollow, a little moist |
| Crust | Crisp but tender | Crisp but tender |
| Flavor | Mild, without a strong taste of egg | Mild and pleasing |
- What gives each its structure?
- How much liquid does each have for its flour?
- Why do the puffs carry more egg?
- Why must the flour be cooked in the boiling water for cream puffs but not for popovers?
Sources
This chapter is written from these open textbooks:
- The Chemistry of Cooking — Sorangel Rodriguez-Velazquez, LibreTextsCC BY-NC-SA 4.0
- Basic Scientific Food Preparation Lab Manual — Dept. of Food Science and Human Nutrition, Iowa State UniversityCC BY-NC-SA 4.0
- Food Safety, Sanitation and Personal Hygiene — BC Cook Articulation Committee, BCcampusCC BY 4.0