Now, pastries is a broad term. It can be used to cover almost any baked good, but it also pertains to certain types of desserts that require a pastry dough. Pastry dough can be almost anything really, as long it is made of flour, a fat(usually butter), and water. This kind of dough has many different variations, but the basics are all the same. Croissants, eclairs, and cream puffs are the few things that are made with a pastry dough, and honestly some of my favorite pastries to make and eat!

At a glance, in the ingredients you'll see yeast in the dough. "But you just said pastry dough is only made of water, fat, and flour!" I did, but in some pastries, yeast is added to give the recipe lift, especially in those that are more bread-like. Plus, they contain all of the basic ingredients that are in all pastries, so we'll continue on with the basic run down. First, you make the dough with flour, yeast, eggs, water, sugar, salt, and milk. This recipes calls for vanilla in the dough, but I always omit it, only because it's easier to make this recipe either sweet(filling it with chocolate) or savory(using it for chicken salad sandwiches) when you skip it. Then, you put the dough in the fridge to rest and get cold for the next important step involving it. Next, you make that slab of butter I mentioned before. You take some softened(not melted, you'll need to leave the butter on the counter overnight for it to get to room temperature) and beat it all together, then you spread it out in a pan, then either stick it in the fridge or in the freezer for it to harden up.

Once the butter is hard, you take the dough out, roll it into a square, place the butter in the middle of it, and encase it with the dough. Then, you're going to use a rolling pin to tap(well, it's more of a good solid hit) the dough to flatten out the butter inside the dough. Once you get it flattened out, you'll fold the dough in half. Now, this is where I differentiate from the recipe. It calls for you to roll out the dough one more time before putting it back in the fridge, but I've found that it's a lot better to put the dough back in the fridge after each roll-and-fold step. This will help keep the butter from melting, because we want the butter to remain solid until the time of baking so we can have those nice, defined layers that croissants are known for. The recipe also then calls for the dough to be rolled-and-folded only two more times, but in all honesty you can roll-and-fold it at least four more times, as this will, again, create even more layers in the final dough.

With the final rolling of the dough, you'll cut it into isosceles triangles. For all of us who don't remember high school geometry(because I had to google it), an isosceles triangle is one with a smaller base and two longer sides. Once you have your triangles cut, you're going to roll then up starting from the flat base up to the point, trying to curl the ends backwards to get the classic croissant shape which isn't necessary to do, it's just for aesthetics. Next, you'll put the now rolled croissants into the fridge for about 30 minutes to let the butter get solid again. After the 30 minutes is up, you'll place the tray of croissants on the counter for about an hour to let them rise. After they have the chance to rise, you'll brush them with an egg wash(water mixed with a little bit of water) and then bake at 425˚F for 15 minutes, reduce the heat to 350˚F for another 10-15 minutes until the croissants are golden brown.

See what I meant by time consuming? But I promise you, if you have a day where you're just hanging out at home, you can easily make yourself some croissants. The time consuming part is the waiting, which is always painful. But, it's also something you can make while you're trying to get some things done at home, because the amount of time in the refrigerator doesn't negatively impact the dough, as long as you don't leave it in for too little time. Then, you'll have some buttery-flakey croissants to have for breakfast or to make sandwiches with!

Pâte à choux is more along the lines of a very thick batter, which you can pipe out onto baking pans. The recipe I always use is from The Kitchn, a very popular cooking and baking blog that I love to use. Their recipe is almost identical to any other pâte à choux recipe I've ever seen, so feel free to use any recipe that you find. But for my purposes, we'll use The Kitchn. The recipe calls for eggs, butter(unsalted), flour, salt, and water. Yup, it's made of five ingredients. Just like with the croissant recipe, I do make some changes to this pâte à choux since I know through trial and error what has worked best for me. For example, I use salted butter and either omit the salt or add a dash of salt. Why? Well, I never have unsalted butter on hand, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. And since the recipe calls for salt anyways, there is no real difference between the two methods. So, in a saucepan(or any pan), you'll melt the butter in the water over high heat, until the mixture is boiling. I like to melt the butter over medium heat first, then add warm water and bring to a boil, that way it keeps from having to wait forever for the butter to melt.

Then, once the water/butter mixture reaches a boil, take it off the heat and add in all of the flour at once. Stir together, preferably using a plastic spatula or a wooden spoon, and put back on the stove at medium heat. Now, you're going to "cook" this mixture until it dries a bit. You'll know when it's ready because the dough will be, like The Kitchn says, "shiny and glossy, and it's thick enough that you can stand a spoon upright in the middle." This takes a few minute, so just think of it as a good upper-body workout. Next, the recipe says to transfer the dough to a mixer with the paddle attachment to cool, but I hate doing dishes, so I just do the next part by hand with the same spatula or wooden spoon. You're going to let this dough cool for a while, about 5 to 10 minutes, and then you're going to start mixing in the eggs one by one. The secret here is to make sure each egg is completely incorporated into the dough before adding the next one. Depending on the humidity, you may need four eggs, but most of the time I end up using three to reach the right texture, which will look like a thick cake batter.

You can, like the recipe says, use a scoop to portion out the dough onto a baking sheet, but I like to use a pastry bag(or a ziplock bag with one corner snipped off) to pipe the dough out, that way I can make the classic round cream puff shape, or the shape for eclairs. Make sure you leave at least a half an inch between each puff, as they will expand some, but mostly they will rise upwards. Next, brush the tops with an egg wash, similar to what we brushed on top of the croissants. The recipe says to use just an egg yolk, but I'm to lazy to separate an egg, and it doesn't make any difference to the end color. Then, you'll bake these bad boys at 425˚F for 12-15 minutes(depending on your oven), then drop the heat to 375˚ for another 12-15 minutes. And for the love of all things pastry, DO NOT OPEN THE OVEN. Sure, it might be an old wives tale that opening the over will ruin them, but the ONE TIME I opened the oven when baking cream puffs, they didn't rise properly. So, in hopes that you'll avoid my mistakes, I'm pleading with you to just leave the oven door shut. Now, here is another place where the recipe and I disagree. The recipe says to drop the oven temperature to 300˚F for another 15 minutes to dry out the pastry, but I never do that. If anything, I'll let them back for an additional 2 to 3 minutes at 375˚ to dry them out, and just keep an eye on them. Yes, at this point it is safe to open the oven and check on them. I've found that it makes no difference, except that it takes even longer to be able to eat a delicious creme puff.

Once you let the puffs cool, you are now free to fill them! For the eclairs, I usually just make vanilla pudding and pipe it into the pastry shells from one end at a downward angle to get it nice and full. For the creme puffs, all you have to do is cut a small part off of the top, fill it with cream, then put the top right on top of the overflowing cream. For the filling, I make a simple whipped cream with whipping cream and sugar(or Cool Whip works just as well), then fill them with the whipped creme and just keep them in the fridge. You can fancy up the creme puff filling by gently folding some coconut pudding and coconut flakes into the whipped creme before filling, which is one of my favorite filling alternatives. And there you go, you can now make pâte à choux and every pastry that uses it as it's base!