Going for Gougères

My gougères

I run the risk of this being one of those precious bits of food writing when I say that I first had gougères while doing wine tasting in Bordeaux. I’ll take the risk. It might sound less hoity-toity if I mention that we signed up for the tour at the tourist office and that we travelled about by minivan. (And given the cost of the tour, those were some terribly expensive glasses of wine.)

At one of the chateaux, the woman who showed us around the property (which was lovely) and led the wine tasting, said, “oh, look, the chef has made gougères for us.” The words were meant to indicate surprise and delight, though the way she said them made it clear that she said them about eight times a day. They smelled good, though. Instead of getting to the gougères and the wine, we got a tour first.

The French ones. Nicely piped,
but a little flat.

We had them between our first and last tasting. Yeah, they were yummy, but I was already analyzing them. They were cold, since they were already there when we arrived and we walked about for about a half hour before we even drank any wine. They were a little tough. One was slightly deflated. Everyone was enthusiastic about them. I munched on mine and thought, “someone makes these better.”

As we walked back to the minivan, my husband expressed surprise about them. “Oh, you can have those any time you want,” I said. “They’re just choux pastry with cheese.” Yup, gougères are cheezy choux pastry, and pâte à choux is easy.

I learned how to make it years ago. We took a cooking course and the dessert was profiteroles filled with vanilla ice cream. Profiteroles are easy. I prefer the term “cream puff,” since instead of ice cream, I fill mine with pastry cream (which is also easy). While I’ve been aware that you can fill profiteroles with all sorts of things, I’ve stuck to filling them with pastry cream and dipping them into chocolate.[1]

Recently, I was making a French-themed meal and decided that gougères were showing up in the menu. I checked a few recipes for choux pastry, two from Julia Child (Mastering the Art of French Cooking and The Way to Cook), one from Françoise Bernard (La Cuisine) and Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything. Both Child and Bernard noted that gougères were made by adding cheese, though in Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Child adds pepper and nutmeg. That allowed me to get my basic recipe:

Gougères

1 cup water
6 Tbs butter (¾ of a stick), cut into pieces
1 tsp salt
¼ tsp pepper
dash of nutmeg
1 cup flour
4 eggs
about 5 oz. shredded cheese, preferably Gruyere or similar[2]

Preheat the oven to 425°
Put the water, butter, salt, pepper, and nutmeg into a saucepan. Bring the ingredients to a boil. Once it is at a boil, turn off the heat, and pour in all the flour and stir vigorously with a wooden or plastic spoon until everything is combined. Continue until it is a thick paste that pulls away from the sides of the pan (this should take a couple of minutes).

Put the pan back on heat. Cook, stirring, until a film appears on the pan. (This takes another couple of minutes.)

Let cool for (you guessed it) a couple minutes then beat in the eggs, one at a time, incorporating each one before you add the next. (This can be done by hand, or you can use a mixer.)[3]

[At this point, other than the pepper and nutmeg, you have pâte à choux, which you could fill with something sweet or savory.]

Add the cheese. It will not incorporate into a smooth batter, but will be somewhat lumpy.

Using a pair of tablespoons, form the batter into balls on a baking sheet or parchment. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes. Let cool (but not too much, these things are heavenly hot from the oven).

Just a note, in Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Julia Child says these will cook in fifteen minutes. I took her at her word and my gougères deflated on cooling. People ate them anyway, but I gave the next batch another five minutes and they retained their shape as they cooled. And people ate them just as avidly.

These can be piped out (the ones in France clearly were), but that starts to transfer this from a quick and easy recipe to one that has you scrubbing cheese off a piping bag. I own piping bags but I’m happy not to use them.

These are going to become a standard at my house.

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1. I’ve read that as a savory appetizer, you can fill them with chicken liver paste, that is mousse de foie de volaille. That’s easy too, but I haven’t thought they’d go over well at parties.  ↩


2. I’ve seen variation on this from 4 oz. to 6 oz. How cheesy do you want them?  ↩


3. You can double this. Then you’ll really want to use a mixer.  ↩

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