Flaky Homemade Croissants

One of the tenets of A Year From Scratch is that making these dishes at home easier than you think. Croissants are easier than you think. Barely. But, hands down the most difficult part of this recipe was learning how to spell croissant. I swear the 'i' should be on the other side of the esses. Cue the ingredient shot.

 

In retrospect there should be milk in that shot. Get some milk and warm it up, it should be warm to the touch, but not hot. Dissolve the yeast in the milk, and combine with the flour, sugar, and salt. Don't use the egg yet. We'll get to that. You can do this by hand (my recommendation) or in a stand mixer. Knead the dough for about 10 minutes until it's nice and smooth.

 

Form the dough into a ball, and let it rise for two hours. Now here's the seriously awesome part of this recipe. If you're making a full batch, take three sticks of butter, cut them the long way and lay them all out on a piece of plastic wrap, the thicker the plastic wrap the better. You should now have six batons, the full length of a stick of butter, but half the width. Do this quickly, because we don't want the butter to start melting.

Cover the butter with another sheet of plastic wrap, so you've formed a butter sandwich, and get out your rolling pin. And by rolling pin I mean pounding pin, because we're not going to roll with it quite yet. Pound the butter so it begins to flatten and the separate sticks begin to combine. When we're done we want a large, continuous sheet of butter. I'll say that again because it is so glorious. A large, continuous sheet of butter.

 Take the dough that's been rising for two hours and punch it down. If you're not familiar with this process it's exactly what it sounds like. The yeast will have caused the dough to rise, and now you punch the dough to get some of that carbon dioxide out of the dough. The dough should be very smooth and soft, but also very elastic. Roll the dough out to about 8”x11”. This will take a while. As I mentioned, the dough is elastic, you'll roll it and it's just going to shrink back to its original size. Fight with the dough long enough and it will give up.

 Place the butter on the dough, like so.

 

Fold the dough into thirds, wrap it in plastic wrap, and pop it in the fridge. Wait at least half an hour, roll it out again, fold and chill. Repeat this at least one more time. When you take the dough out of the fridge you may have to whack it a few times with the rolling pin before it's pliable enough to roll out. This is both normal, and amusing. Have at it.

Roll up the dough one more time and pop it in the fridge overnight. It's liable to rise quite a bit, so you may want to double wrap it. I've never had a problem with a single wrap.

The next morning, take out the dough, and cut it in half. Roll that out really thin, like an quarter of an inch, or so. Trim the sides so you're working with a rectangle of dough.

Now, if you're making croissants, cut the dough into isosceles triangles (two sides equal). If you're making pain au chocolat, cut the dough into smaller rectangles.

 For a croissant, nick the center of the small edge of the triangle, and use some of the trimmed dough to make a small ball. Place the ball just below the nick, and roll the croissant while stretching the dough. This sounds tricky, but the dough, again, really elastic, it will stretch easily. So, hold the wide end of the dough (with the dough ball) in one hand, and roll it slowly toward your other hand, stretching the dough as you go.

Now, let the croissants rise for about an hour, covered, and pre-heat the oven to 375. Remember that egg from forever ago? Take the egg, beat it with two tablespoons of water and brush it on top of the croissants right before you pop them in the oven. Bake for about 15 minutes.

 As the amount of butter in the recipe indicates, these are incredibly rich and flaky. They are well worth the effort and much more impressive than their from-the-can counterparts.

Ingredients:

3 1/2 cups flour, plus extra for kneading (500 g)

1 1/2 Tbsp yeast (15g)

1/2 cup sugar (90g)

2 tsp salt (15g)

1 1/4 c Warm Milk (300 g)

3 sticks butter (340g)

1 egg + 2 Tbsp water (varies)

Procedure:

1. Mix the yeast with the warm milk until dissolved

2. Combine the dry ingredients

3. Stir milk in to the dry mix until the dough start to come together

4. Knead the dough until it's smooth, or about 10 minutes, let the dough rise for two hours. Then punch down.

5. Beat and roll the butter into a large sheet (see the description for more detail)

6. Roll out the dough, and place the butter on the rolled dough. Fold the dough in thirds, and chill

7. Beat and roll the dough, then fold in thirds. Repeat once more, and let the dough rise overnight in the refrigerator.

8. Roll ½ the dough out into a 1/4” sheet and cut triangles or rectangles out of the dough for croissants or pain au chocolat, respectively.

9. Roll the croissants using the method described above, let rise once more before painting with egg wash and baking for 15 minutes in a 375 degree oven.

Comments

[meg]

The French language is a marvel. Just when you think you've got that vowel pinned down, it slips right through your phonetic fingers.

[Demetra Lambros]

I don't want to get all mushy but I really have to say that at the moment, whoever Ben is, he is my current favorite person. I make everything I possibly can from scratch and I love it. But I had never even HEARD of making croissants at home. Just never crossed my mine. I found this site via twitter via FoodGeek via FF and VOILA, a great description of making croissants. At HOME. omg omg omg. I love this recipe, I love the photos and I love the way the whole process is described. I am dying for my kids to know what a croissant is really supposed to taste like and this looks like the real thing. I am THRILLED. I live in Greece and until now was delighted that a plane-ride to Paris was all I needed to take in order to eat a real croissant. But now I can save all that money and just buy BUTTER. Ironically, yesterday I bought 2 kilos at the store. My kids were in shock. Now I know what I will use it for. THANK YOU FOR THIS BLOG POST!!!! (won't say recipe since it is so much more.... ;-)