This is the first recipe post for "French Fridays With Dorie" and I couldn't be more excited. The first few recipes for this baking and cooking group were chosen by Dorie Greenspan herself and her very first choice was the recipe on page 4 for gougéres. As Dorie states in her new cookbook Around My French Table, "the easiest way to describe gougéres is to call them cheese puffs" and oh boy, these are the cheesiest puffs ever!!! Chocked full of Gruyére cheese, when these puffs are baking in the oven you'll think you have died and gone to heaven!
I've made "choux" dough a few times in the past (sweet and savory) and have never had an issue with it. This time however, it seemed to lose it's dense, thick consistency. I have two ideas of what I think I did wrong this time. Very possibly I mixed the dough too hard and fast during the egg addition with my stand mixer, which may have broken the dough down a bit. Or perhaps I added a bit too much cheese. Gosh knows I've been guilty of that before!
The above picture is before the addition of the 5 eggs. After beating each egg in separately, I think you can see from the following picture that the dough seems just a little too thin in texture.
I wasn't sure how, or if, I should (or could) try and fix the consistency so I carried on and dolloped the dough onto the parchment lined baking sheets.
As the recipe calls for, you need to preheat your oven to 425 degrees. But what's different here is when you slide your ready puffs into the oven, you immediately turn back the heat to 375 and bake them off at that lower temperature for 24-30 minutes, rotating the pans halfway through the baking process.
Luckily I had my camera ready right after they came out of the oven because what little "puffing" they did do, sadly deflated right before my eyes. Also, I may have kept mine in the oven for just a minute too long because they're just a little too brown (and look extra cheesy) compared to the picture in Dorie's book on page 5 (shown below):
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Here are a few photo's of mine in comparison. I think I'll give myself two and a half stars on looks and a definite 5 stars on taste, thanks to this recipe!!!
With all that said (and shown), the flavor in these gougéres are well worth making again and again. Certainly fancy enough to serve at a lavish dinner party or just plain delicious enough to serve your family in the middle of the week just because you love them! That's what I did!!!
"Chow" for now,
p.s. If anyone has ideas of how and why my puffs didn't puff, I sure would appreciate your thoughts for next time I make these. Thanks :)Labels: Dorie Greenspan, food blog, French fridays, gougeres, Gruyére cheese, Let's Eat, LYL
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