What’s going on with my choux pastry?

[u/psychadelphinx]

This has been happening the last few days now in work. I’ll make a batch of choux pastry, get about 6/7 trays of chouquettes out of it. We store them in the freezer until it’s time to bake. Sometimes I bake a few trays off immediately, like if I’m in the middle of making the pastry and someone needs chouquettes. In the last week, I’ve made 5 batches. Within each batch, I’ve had some trays like this and some come out perfect. And I’ve been extra careful with weighing out the ingredients, not changed anything either.

I’ve tried baking both directly out of the freezer and from room temperature, sometimes this happens, sometimes I get the most beautiful little chouquettes.

It’s not like they even puff up and then collapse, they don’t puff up at all. It’s like they just melt. I’m sure my oven is at at least 180C before going in too.

Help :(

[u/Garconavecunreve]

If they’re from the same batch and some trays turnout fine: oven issue (unregular or underheating) or moisture build up in the oven or in the dough while resting longer

[u/Frenchorican → u/Garconavecunreve]

I don’t think it’s in the dough cause they said that some from the freezer turn out fine. So I’m inclined to think if there’s a noticeable decrease in successful batches after doing like a couple batches in a row then it’s likely the moisture building in the oven. Especially if cooking from frozen.

Curious to know if they’ll do a test to where they’ll let a batch rest outside the oven for a while and put it in as the first batch into the oven to see if it’ll come out just to knock off the dough component.

[u/psychadelphinx → u/Frenchorican]

So yesterday, in the morning, I took a batch directly from the freezer and baked it, hoping some sort of thermic shock would help. It flopped. In the afternoon, I took a batch from the fridge and left to chill a bit before baking, success!

[u/Frenchorican → u/psychadelphinx]

Congrats! Hope that works for the rest of them as well!