The making of croissants: days 2 and 3. So I managed to make the croissants in time for Saturday breakfast. This involved a late rolling and folding procedure on Thursday evening and then shaping them on Friday evening and allowing them time to prove. I do think that the whole process could be done over 2 days and not 3 if you didn’t want to do the last refrigeration bit at the end. I do not think this is necessary and perhaps could be eliminated by those of you with better time management skills and abilities to read recipes all the way through to the end before starting.
The croissants themselves were speed proved in a very low oven on Saturday morning. Firstly because I had to leave them in the fridge over night (see above: reading recipe to the end) and secondly because breakfast was early and they would have taken about 3 hours to come to room temperature and become ‘soft, pillowy and feather light’. So I cheated and left them in an oven at 30C for 20 minutes and then turned up the temp to 200C. They turned out okay, not the best croissants in the world and definitely not award winning yet! But I shall revise the recipe and post it here later this week once my results I improve!The croissants weren’t as laminated as I would like (they did not have enough layers) but they still tasted good. I mean seriously, there is so much butter in them it is impossible for them not to be good.
Croissants: Shaped and Proving
The instructions in Flour are really good and thorough. The whole rolling and folding thing always has me stumped and I can never remember how to do it. The book explains it step by step. I did relatively well – apart from not having the butter the same consistency as the dough which I think explains some of the layering issues. In addition, the instructions for actually forming the croissants are excellent. They shape beautifully if you do as instructed.My 9 year old enthusiast cousin managed to shape half excellently.
Croissants: Baked
Tomorrow: caramel pecan brownies.
Lexi Writes 