Croissants

Hi all, so I recently “discovered” that I could edit my photos before posting it onto my blog.  It was retarded of me, really, to not edit them before.  I know photoshop inside and out, but it never occurred to me to edit them for bad lighting and such before posting.  I always thought I just needed a better camera and better lighting, but photoshop can still make my not-so-great pictures into not-so-great-but-better pictures.  I think I will take the time to edit pictures from now on, even though it takes a while.

I can smell the butter just by looking at this photo

So my friend decided to hold a breakfast for dinner potluck at her place, and she asked where to get good croissants.  I immediately jumped at the opportunity to make some for everyone.  I am going to be teaching a baking class at my university this upcoming fall, and so I need to run through all the recipes before the start of school to make sure that I know what I’m doing.  Croissants happened to be one of the things we bake, so this was my perfect chance to practice.  I have no idea where the recipe comes from.  I inherited a bunch of slides/teaching material from the previous baking instructor, who inherited from his instructor.  I will post it here, but it is in no way my recipe; I just followed it!  Also, the breakfast for dinner potluck was a lot of fun, and the pictures of the food at the potluck can be seen in my mini Evernote Food blog (found in the extras section) . Now for the recipe and more pictures…

Note: use the recent post on Serious Eats about croissants for help if needed.

Ingredients:

• Bread Flour 250g
• Sugar 25g
• Yeast 5g
• Salt 12g
• Milk 180mL
• Softened Butter 25g
• Cold Butter 140 g

Procedure:

1. Mix the bread flour, sugar, and salt together in a large bowl.  Activate the yeast by heating up the milk to no more than 32C and letting the yeast dissolve in it.  Let this mixture sit for 10 minutes.  Melt the butter into the milk, and combine the two just until incorporated.
2. Place in a floured bowl and let it ferment until the volume doubles.
3. Wrap up the dough and refrigerate overnight.
4. Take the cold butter and cut into 1/2inch high slabs and line it up in plastic wrap as shown.  Roll out the cold butter between the plastic wrap until it is a millimeter or two thick in a shape of a rectangle.  Do not let it melt during this process.  If it starts to become melt put it back into the fridge for 20 minutes and try again.  The butter must be also warm enough to be pliable.  You want a continuous sheet of butter, not cracked.  When you are done rolling it out, wrap it in plastic wrap and stick it into the fridge as well.
   
5. Roll out the cold dough on a well floured surface.  The butter should cover 2/3 of the dough.  Place the butter down on the dough.  Fold the unbuttered 1/3 dough over the butter.  Fold the buttered third over the dough.  You should get layers of dough, butter, dough, butter.  Seal all the edges.  Chill in the fridge for 30 minutes in the freezer or, if longer, in the fridge.
6. For the lamination steps, you can chill the dough in the freezer for 30 minutes between each step to ensure that the dough and butter stays cold.  However, it will make the dough very tough by the end of it, so you might want to switch off.  The goal of lamination is to make layers by folding without the butter melting, so use your judgement.  Roll out the dough and do two 4 folds (fold the two sides towards the center and then fold the dough together like a book) and then do two 3 folds (divide dough into 3rds and fold one on top of the other).  When you are done, you can either let it chill in the fridge for another 30 minutes or overnight.
7. Roll out the dough into 1/2cm thickness (read: thin.).  Cut the dough into isosceles triangles for regular croissants, and rectangles for pain au chocolat.  You can pack different fillings into the rolled up croissants if you want.  I chose cheese because I happened to have some laying around.  Typically they are filled with almond paste, and of course pain au chocolat is filled with chocolate, which I used chocolate chips.
   
8. Let it proof until light and fluffy, around an hour.  Give the tops an egg wash for nice brown tops
   
9. Bake at 400C for about 15-20 minutes until golden.

Croissants out of the oven!

Look at those nice crispy layers

This was definitely a croissant success!

Anyway, I’m sorry for the lack of pictures in this post. I didn’t really plan it out very well. Please pay serious eats a visit if you’re confused.