Croissants

We have some French bakeries in town that make great croissants (Eva Bakery, Les Madeleines, and Tulie Bakery). The pain au chocolat from Tulie Bakery is my favorite, I even wrote a short essay on how it was the best thing I ever ate. I got bored one day and began to research making croissants by hand. I watched a couple videos and decided I would try my hand at making croissants. After researching many recipes, I decided on one from Tasting Table. Making croissants requires a lot of work and time. You make the dough on the first day, let it sit in the fridge, and the next day, you roll the dough out in a rectangle, pound the butter into a flat rectangle, place it on top of the dough, fold it up like an envelope, then go through a series of folding, rolling, and chilling (laminating) to make the layers. It ended up taking over 7 hours, and the first proofing step didn’t work, so it got delayed by a day. It is very difficult to roll out the croissants because if the dough is too warm, the butter seeps out and you lose some layers, but if it is too cold, the butter is very hard and it is difficult to roll out. Finding that balance of temperature was a struggle throughout the lamination process. I ended up making both chocolate croissants and ham and cheese croissants. Although they were very good, I definitely need more practice and patience to get to the level of the French bakeries! (and maybe a professional laminator as well)