There are few simple pleasures on a Sunday. Something lovely to eat, a sunday paper and a good cup of coffee. I’m not a big fan of store bought croissants, simply because they can be a bit tasteless and plastic. There is nothing to beat fresh bakeds ones. With that in mind, and aimed with my trusty Baking Made Easy by Lorraine Pascal, I decided to try and make my own. I love this book, great recipes and really easy to follow.
In a nutshell, you need flour, yeast and butter. There is a lot of rolling and folding to create the layers of flaky pastry that croissants are known for. In between the rolling and folding, you need to chill the pastry. I think the trickiest bit happened after I made the dough, you have to fold into the dough pretty much a whole packet of room temp butter. So it can go everywhere.
Butter folded in, I did two more folds then left it in the fridge overnight. In the morning, I gave it one more roll and fold before rolling it out and cutting it into triangles. I googled lots of other croissant tutorials, the best shape is a base to the triange of the size you want the croissant and then make a really large peak. Then you can get a good roll and they look better.
With a good egg wash they are off into the oven. And they were divine. So lovely, so flaky and so much better than I had hoped for. I made tonnes of dough, so I froze it. It was easy to work with once defrosted, but instead of getting up early to made them up, I did them the night before and covered them with clingfilm. They rose quite well, better in fact and you get a great gap in the centre where steam build up and makes the pastry yummy.
I am so going to make these again. Next time, I’m going to make some fruit scones….
Painted Nails & Baking Scales 