The Croissants Cronicles

Making croissants has been on my to-do-list for a long time. Well, not any longer because gues what's the challenge of the Bread Baking Babes for this month? Yes, making croissants. Reading their experiences makes me aware this is a technique that demands concentration and time and perhaps also a little luck? Just the activity for a saturday.

As a warming-up I read the recipe of Michel Roux described by Linda Collister and read that he uses just a little bit more milk and more butter with the same amount of flour.

A search on the internet caused more confusion; the one recipe uses lukewarm milk, the other cold and so on. I think I'll just try one recipe, the recipe of Lien, and see what happends.

Day 1
300 ml.milk
500 gr. flour
2 tsp. instant yeast
1 tsp. salt
50 gr. sugar
250 gr. butter, unsalted and cold
1 eggyolk with a pinch of salt

Like Lien describes, I stir the milk through the flour and allow it to rest 30 minutes. It looks like a unfinished thick batter.

Add the yeast, sugar and salt and knead very shortly till you get a sticky dough. I kneaded this 2 minutes as Michel Roux advised. Neglecting the uncomfortable feeling that this dough needed more kneading, I allowed it to rest 6 hours in the fridge.

Between a double folded sheet of baking parchment I rolled out the butter (till the size I needed) after slamming it softly with the rollingpin. After this, the dough was taken out of the fridge. It still hadn't doubled in size but I've planned to give it a nights rest after forming the croissants. That will give the dough enough time.





The butter was incorporated into the dough and treated like this video on You Tube. Make sure to seal the edges to keep the butter in it. Between the 3 folding sessions it was left 30 minutes in the fridge.





After the last pause it was ready to make the croissants. I've rolled it out, cut it in triangles and formed the croissants. Oh joy! This I liked!


Well, it's saturday evening and I'd like to serve the croissants on sundaymorning so I've brushed them carefully with the eggyolk with salt and putted them in the fridge. And now.......just wait till tomorrow and see what's happened. Hope they will grow nicely while I'm asleep. Yawn.