First try at croissants

First try at croissants
I am a keen baker, and in recent years I have gotten really into bread baking, trying many recipes, experimenting and best of all eating lovely bread. For me cooking is a great way to unwind, and I often spend my weekend cooking up a storm. Always keen to try out a new recipe my attention was grabbed by a post on www.thefreshloaf.com about laminated yeast doughs.

The recipe I used:
600g bread flour
8g salt
30 g milk powder
36g fresh, 12g dried yeast
378g cold water
250g butter (for folds)

The key with this recipe seems to be keep it cold, so work on it in short bursts then put back in the fridge, in my experience the slower a dough rises and develops the tastier it is with most bread recipes, and with the high butter content in this one, keeping it cool and stopping it from melting is important.
This recipe can be prepared almost to completion, refrigerated over night and finished and bake in the morning.

• Make the dough: I used dried yeast and sprinkled onto the water in a jug to 'refresh' it whilst I weighed everything else out. I placed all the ingredients except the butter into my kenwood chef and used the dough hook for about 10 minutes.
• Chill the dough: I cling filmed the bowl and placed in the fridge for 30 minutes.
• To prepare the butter for the laminating process there are two ways, 1) is to slice the block of butter straight from the fridge so its cold, into 4mm slices and place in the fridge until ready to use. 2) Place the block of butter between two sheets of grease proof papper or cling film and using a rolling pin, beat and bash it out into one large flat slice, this will also need to be kept in the fridge until you need to use it.
• Next roll out the dough into a large rectangle using flour to stop it sticking to the table and pin. Try to keep the edges straight as this makes the folding process easier. I rolled my dough out to roughly 2'x1' to a thickness of between 5 and 10mm
• Put the butter onto two thirds of the dough sheet, either place the whole sheet on top or lay the smaller pieces on so that they touch (or as close as they will go whilst being spread out enough to cover the whole area). The same technique as when making puff pastry, if this has confused you, this website www.bakeinfo.co.nz/Facts/Pastry/Puff-pastry explains it really well.
• Now to do the first tri fold, take the third of dough that has no butter on it and fold over and cover the middle third which has butter on. Then take the last third and and fold it onto the other two thirds, once again this website www.bakeinfo.co.nz/Facts/Pastry/Puff-pastry explains this process brilliantly. 
• Half turn: imagine the dough is a clock, pick it up and twelve and six and turn it so that 12 moves to 3 and 6 moves to 9, this is called a half turn.
• Roll out the dough in the new position into the large rectangle as before. 
• Do another tri fold, then place the dough in the fridge for another half an hour.
• Do another 2 tri folds with a half turn in between and chill. 
• A this point you can leave the dough in the fridge over night or just wait 30 minutes.

roll the dough out one last time, then cut into triangles

I cut it into squares then in half into triangles, this shape was not quite right to do the final roll so i am going to experiment with the cutting a little bit and get that right next time i make croissants.

• Leave the triangles for about 5 minutes to rest, they can be stacked up, but no more than 5 or 6 per pile, I covered them with cling film to stop them from drying out.
• Stretch and roll: pick up a triangle, and pull gently to stretch it out length ways (this gives more wraps around when rolling, giving it a better look). Then roll from the base to the triangle all the way to the tip. place of a baking tray (I used not stick mats which are amazing, but you can just grease the tray) and curve the ends towards each other to make a crescent shape. 

• Leave them to rise, my recipe said 40 minutes, but I feel this was not long enough, and will try a longer rise time in the future.
• Egg wash the croissants and bake in the oven for 12-15 at 230 degrees C

I tried leaving one croissant straight and not crescent shaped to see how it would look.

In my opinion this recipe was easier than I expected, and involved less rolling and folding than i thought it would, I think these were successful, they had great layers from the butter and folds, and a lovely flaky crispy crust, with soft insides. I will try a longer rise before baking and see how this changes them. 

all the best

rachie

Update
As promised I tried this recipe again, but with a longer final prove. The results were much better with a lighter pastry as a result!

Whilst eating one, I thought you may like to see the layers:

Happy cooking

xoxo