Baking Bouchon - Recipe 64: Traditional Croissants

Croissants are one of the reasons I decided to bake my way through the Baking Bouchon cookbook.  I've always wanted to make them but I figured they were way too difficult.  I thought that about puff pastry too which I've successfully executed (kind of) and this is fundamentally the same thing (butter wrapped in dough, rolled and folded to create layers) so I had a lot of confidence going into this recipe.

I know we just got off 2 whole weeks on the same theme and you were expecting variety to make a comeback here this week but when I decided it was time to make croissants I went all in and made all four kinds of croissants in the cookbook at the same time.  The process of folding and rolling the dough takes a lot of time and I decided it was easier to do it all at once.  Therefore, you get 4 days of croissants. 

We start at the beginning with the classic croissant.  The dough for all four types of croissants is made the same way but some recipes call for less dough than others, so I made 3 batches.

It starts with a poolish, which we've discussed when making bread.  It turns out that croissant dough is more like bread dough than pastry dough because it contains yeast which contributes to the rise (as opposed to puff pastry which gets its height only from the layers).

The poolish, or starter, is made from flour, yeast and water which is left at room temperature for 12-15 hours so the yeast have time to get all bubbly and active.


The rest of the ingredients in the dough are more flour, more yeast, more water, a little sugar, a little butter, a little salt and teaspoon of diastatic malt powder.  I've been trying not to go nuts buying random ingredients, particularly those that I only need a teaspoon of, but I wanted these croissants to be perfect so I ordered this powder on the Internet.  (King Arthur Flour has been a good resource for me for all kinds of random baking things.)  I didn't do any research on this stuff but the label says it makes breads have better crust, rise and texture.  I'm sure this has to do with science and theirs is not to reason why.

The dough gets kneaded in the stand mixer for twenty minutes.  Because I made 3 batches at the same time, this meant that my mixer was running for an hour which meant that it was really freakin' hot.  I was worried it would die (it's been making straining sounds every since I overloaded it with so much cookie dough it couldn't move) that I kept putting cold washcloths on it like it had typhoid.  CA said it was a really smart idea and considering it didn't start smoking, I guess it helped.

The dough then rises for an hour, is rolled in to a rectangle and frozen for 20 minutes until it's nice and firm.

Next up is the butter block where I take three sticks of butter and make them into one giant butter pat which is awesome.  It involves pounding it and rolling it until it's stuck together and then trimming it and rolling again to get a nice rectangle.  The butter block gets chilled again to make sure it's nice and firm

Now it's time to encase the butter in dough so you roll the dough out into a nice long rectangle, place the butter in the middle and wrap it up like a butter gift.  I might be the only person who would love to unwrap a box of butter.  I also wouldn't mind be wrapped in a dough blanket either.

Next comes hours of chilling the dough, rolling it out into a long thin rectangle and folding it into thirds.  This process gets repeated 3 times for 3 batches of dough so 9 times.  Oh yeah, and then you roll it out again before you cut it so let's make that 12 times.  Needless to say that my hands hurt.  Embarrassingly my abs hurt.  If you ever want evidence that you're out of shape you should get sore abs from baking.  It's ridiculous. 

Did I tell you it took me 3 days to make all these?

Now that I'm thoroughly exhausted just remembering the rolling process, it's time to shape these into croissant shapes.

For the traditional croissant shape the dough is cut into triangles.  The triangles get stretched lengthwise and rolled into crescents.  Thomas tucks in the ends of the bottom of each triangle on his croissants before rolling instead of wrapping them around the front of the croissant.  I have no feelings either way about this.

The rolled croissants are then brushed with egg wash and left to proof for 2 hours.  This happened on my dining room table on every baking pan I have in the house because I don't have enough sheet pans to hold 50 croissants.  It's times like this that I like to point out to CA that I actually do need more kitchen equipment.

The instructions in this cookbook don't indicate what the proofed dough should look like, just that an impression should remain if the dough is pressed gently.  I waited for the croissants to really rise and get bigger but that never really happened so a few hours later I decided it was time to go ahead and bake them.

The croissants get brushed with egg wash again (there's no way these guys won't get golden brown) and popped into the oven.

I spent the majority of the 40 minute baking time staring through the window of the oven.  I was so nervous that they wouldn't turn out right but they were freaking beautiful!!!!

Not only were they beautiful but they taste amazing too - just as good as something you'd buy in a bakery.  I couldn't be prouder of these guys.  They shatter when you break them apart just like you want a flaky croissant to do.   They're light and taste amazing by themselves or with a little butter and jam.

CA and I ate a lot of them, took a lot to work and also froze a few for future enjoyment.  People actually asked if we bought them which I took as a compliment.

Can you tell that I'm proud of myself?  Well, I am.

Variations on this theme continue tomorrow.  Did someone say chocolate?

Enjoy!
Julie