Croissants

This demo will look a little different, because the recipe I followed already had an excellent video by a pastry chef, so I'm going to post the video here and let her do the teaching! I did complete the recipe step by step and I posted a presentation for my class which gets in to a bit more detail, if you're interested in seeing that, you can click here. I've also included just a few notes below that aren't addressed in the video.

Croissants

Ingredients:

Détrempe (Dough)

  • 3 ½ cup all-purpose flour

  • 1 cup water, room temperature (or 70-90 degrees)

  • ½ cup milk, room temperature (or 70-90 degrees)

  • 5 Tbsp sugar

  • 1 pkg instant dry or active dry yeast (2 1/4 teaspoons)

  • 1 ¼ tsp salt

  • 2 Tbsp unsalted butter, at room temperature

Beurrage (Butter):

  • 1 ¼ cup unsalted butter, at room temperature

Optional Egg Wash:

  • 1 egg whisked with 2 Tbsp of water, for brushing


Equipmement:

  • This recipe works best with a stand mixer, but the mixing can be done by hand

  • Rolling Pin

  • Baking sheet (2)

  • Pizza Cutter

  • optional but helpful: 8x8 pan for shaping butter

  • Plastic wrap

  • Tea Towel

  • Optional but helpful: silicone baking mat or parchment paper


A note about this mixing method - The Roll In Method involves making a large block of butter and encasing it in dough and then rolling it out, folding it over, resting, and repeating. Each time you repeat the rolling and folding process you are exponentially adding to the total number of layers.

This process is called lamination and creates laminated dough. Think about a laminated piece of paper, we're doing the same thing! We're coating layers of dough in thin layers of butter. When the cold butter hits the hot oven, the liquid in the butter evaporates forcing the thin dough layers apart as they set giving you a flaky finished product.

So, for this to work best, you need to keep your dough and your butter cold! So it will require some time in the refrigerator. I rushed to make my croissants all in one day, but I highly recommend you stretching the process out over 2 or even 3 days.

One other note about the yeast, in the video, Anna Olson uses instant yeast, which is a wonderful product. It doesn't need any time to start working, you just add it to your dough which has liquid in it, and bam, it gets going. The only problem with this is that sometimes those little yeast packets can expire, or they may have been treated poorly (left in a hot warehouse or delivery truck) before they found their way to you, so if you don't take the time to test it first, you might waste all of your ingredients.

I also know many people have purchased active dry yeast which is very similar, but it does like a little head start. So this step is not in the video, but I highly recommend you do it no matter what type of yeast you are using.

Activating your Yeast

In a separate container, combine:

  • 1 cup water, room temperature (or 70-90 degrees)

  • ½ cup milk, room temperature (or 70-90 degrees)

  • 5 Tbsp sugar

  • 1 pkg instant dry or active dry yeast (2 1/4 teaspoons)

Now add in your yeast & stir

After you stir, you can set the mixture aside and start measuring out the other dough ingredients.

Wait for signs of life

After about 5 minutes, you should see some foam or bubbles forming on the top of your mixture. We've given the yeast food (sugar) and water, so it should be waking up and getting to work. It should also smell like beer or bread. If nothing is happening, make sure your water and milk were at least lukewarm, if you used cold, this process will take MUCH longer. (DO NOT MICROWAVE OR HEAT AFTER YOU HAVE ADDED YOUR YEAST). Give it more time. If nothing has happened in 30 minutes to 1 hour, it is likely that there was a problem with your yeast.

Now you're ready to proceed to making croissants! The video below gives excellent advice. I've also added just another note or two below about my experience.

Temperature is EVERYTHING

My butter was too cold when I started rolling it in. I was left with big pieces of butter in my finished dough. I literally lost sleep over it, and guess what, while my croissants didn't turn out quite as flaky as I would have liked, they were still very croissant like and delicious. It should look more like the picture on the right, you see layers, but not huge chunks of butter.

Another common temperature related problem is butter pooling or seeping when you bake your croissants.

I was taught in culinary school to freeze laminated dough for 15-20 minutes before baking it so that the butter move more quickly from solid to steam giving you more layers and less pooling. I had minimal butter seepage. Some will happen, that's normal.

To egg wash or not to egg wash?


I chose not to egg wash my croissants. Egg wash gives your finished products more even browning and a beautiful shine. To me, right now, it didn't seem worth an egg for my family to enjoy shiny croissants. The picture to the left shows what they might have looked like with an egg wash.

Storage

Because of the flaky layers and high butter content, croissants actually do best stored in an air tight container in the refrigerator for up to 1 week. They don't love to be frozen as they get soggy while defrosting.


If you find yourself not needing the full recipe, you have a couple of choices, you can make a half batch, or you can make the full amount and follow the recipe until the croissants are shaped. Then freeze the croissants separately. Once they have fully frozen you can put them in a zip top bag. Now the next time you want freshly baked croissants, all you have to do is let them proof (for several hours) and bake!