Baking Bouchon - Recipe 65: Pains au Chocolat

What's better than light, flaky, buttery croissants?  Those same croissants with chocolate.

I never pick chocolate croissants when I'm hitting up a bakery for breakfast.  I actually can't remember ever eating a chocolate croissant, although it can't possibly be true that I've never had one.  I'll usually opt for a muffin or scone if I'm going for a sweet breakfast pastry.  I'm not a chocolate for breakfast kind of girl.

These facts haven't changed, but I am now obsessed with chocolate croissants... for dessert.

Yesterday we went through the whole croissant dough making process, the whole butter block encasing process and the whole rollin', rollin', rollin' process.  Today we get to skip right over that because chocolate croissants (I can't call them pains au chocolat like Thomas Keller does because it's too pretentious and while I am a food snob I try my best not to be pretentious) are made exactly the same way as regular croissants until it comes to the cutting and rolling part.

For these the dough gets rolled out and cut into rectangles.  Each rectangle gets a chocolate baking stick and a brush of egg wash to help it stick together.  The chocolate is semi-sweet so it's not crazy sweet which I appreciate (especially if you do opt to eat these at breakfast).  I couldn't find the sticks in my local stores so I ordered them online at King Arthur Flour.  My only word of advice is not to order them when it's hot outside.  Not that I know anything about that.  All that gets rolled up into a pretty little log.

By the way, if you want to cheat and make easy chocolate croissants - just roll one of these sticks up inside a crescent roll.  Done.  Heck, just put some chocolate chips in there.  I, however, like to make things more difficult.

The rolls get brushed with more egg wash and proofed for a couple of hours.  Then they go straight into the oven.  Because I baked the regular croissants first, I knew I wouldn't have any trouble with these so I didn't stalk the oven window during the baking process.

The result is a beautifully browned, light, flaky, buttery pastry that envelopes a creamy, slightly sweet chocolate center.  These are amazing and totally worth all the work.


My only minor complaint is that some of them unrolled a little bit during the baking process so they're not all tight little rounds, but I'm full of aesthetic forgiveness when something tastes this good.

I can't say that I've been converted to a chocolate croissant for breakfast type of person because I was so busy eating regular croissants for breakfast to eat these at the same time.  I did however eat them for dessert for a few days and was a huge fan.

Enjoy!
Julie