Kitchen Mysteries is a weekly exploration of oddities surrounding cooking and food. They could be recipes that fail when they shouldn’t, conflicting advice from different sources, or just plain weirdness. If it happens in a kitchen, and you’re not sure why, send atweet to The Food Geekto find out what’s happening.

jelly_jan asks via The Twitters:

Help is on the way! Well, not immediately. First I had to ask a couple of follow-up questions, as this was a little vague. For those following along at home: turns out that she makes pâte à choux all the time, but she recently she tried making it in Thailand. They rose a bit, but not as much as normal, and they are more dense. She questions the humidity, but I don’t believe that’s it.

Pâte à choux is a wet dough that uses steam to rise up and become hollow inside, kind of like a hot air balloon. While the dough is wet, it is malleable and light, and spreads out. As time goes on, the heat from the oven sets the dough in place before it falls, and its combination of strong protein structure with light weight allows it to stay up even when all the steam leaves. It’s useful for creme puffs, eclairs, profiteroles, beignets, and any number of similar applications.

因此，坚固，轻巧和湿的面团。基于对出了什么问题的描述，听起来没有足够的结构来支持上升。想象一下，如果您的热气球中有很多额外的孔。根据它的削弱程度，它可能会升高，但是空气将在膨胀之前逃脱。蒸汽会在水时尽可能高，但是一旦烤箱将结构设置在面团上，它就不会再走了。因此，它必须获得升降机，这意味着必须修补这些孔，这意味着它必须具有结构。

强度来自蛋白质，并带有面团，这通常意味着两件事：面筋和蛋清。鸡蛋是pâtumchoux的常见成分，但是雪莉·科里赫（Shirley Corriher）和其他人建议添加额外的蛋清结构。请记住：在烘烤中，蛋黄会变嫩，而白色则增加了结构。这并不能解释为什么曾经效果正常的食谱尚不顺利，除非这些是疯狂的突变卵，这些鸡蛋和蛋黄和白色。

No, my guess is the flour. I don’t know what variations of flour you had in Thailand, but I know that even in the US, the same style of flour is going to vary in protein content from brand to brand, based on the amounts of the proteins glutenin and gliadin that are present in the dough. When glutenin and gliadin are mixed with water, they form gluten. It’s not just how much total glutenin and gliadin that are in there, but the relative amounts of each, and these will vary based on the variety of wheat, the growing location, the season, and so on. A mill should be able to stabilize the relative amounts for any given brand or style of flour, but it’s likely that any new country that you’re in will have different standards of flours.

因此：您想要的是高浮雕面粉。通常，高浮雕面粉用于面包，而不是糕点或蛋糕。看看您是否可以找到这样的东西。面粉中的面筋的百分比越高，制作适当结构所需的面粉越少。这就像使用太空时代的材料来建造您的热气囊：更大的结构，重量更轻。

如果您找不到合适的面粉，您可能想尝试recipe from Shirley Corriher’s Bakewise.

You may be happier with your own recipe working again, as you’re more familiar with it, but if not, go ahead and give that one a try. Shirley likes to bullet-proof her recipes by aligning everything towards success, so it’s a great way to go when things just aren’t working.