Whilst Part I discusses all the loaves we made, and the dinner we ate on my Saturday Night, Sunday Morning baking course at Small Food Bakery, I found that I wanted to also write about making croissants and danish pastries and the last post was getting quite full. So here is the other half of the two-part series on my baking experience at Small Food Bakery.

In between all the bread making, we also made an enriched laminated dough from which we generated croissants and pastries. We ate some of these for breakfast at the bakery on Sunday and the rest are currently in my freezer, waiting to be eaten at the weekend!

Unlike the sourdough and rye dough mixtures, which we made up ourselves, the croissant dough had been made up earlier by the team at Small Food because it needs to rest a significant time (at least 2 hours, preferably 4) in the fridge before being used. The dough was thus already super cold before we started to work with it. Kim taught us ‘single fold’ lamination.

Single fold lamination is achieved by rolling the dough out into a rectangle, and placing the butter in the centre. You then fold the pastry around the butter so it is entirely encased. It is then a case of rolling another rectangle and folding the dough up in thirds – so the bottom third up into the centre and then the top third over the bottom third so that you have a parcel of sorts. You then give this a quarter turn and perform the process again, rolling and folding the dough. If the dough becomes ‘tense’ you can place it in the fridge before rolling it out and folding it for a third and final time. This creates 27 laminated layers and results in a flaky, beautiful, buttery croissant. (This is the same technique for making puff pastry but that you roll and fold six times, resulting in the thousands of layers.) Once you have performed your three turns, rest the dough in the fridge to give it a chance to relax (and to make your life easier when you come to shape the pastries).

When you are ready to roll it out, remove the dough from the fridge and roll it into a square. We then divided the dough into four rectangles that would make shapes for four croissants and 5 pastries – cutting two rectangles into triangles, one rectangle in half and one rectangle into thirds. The triangles we rolled up into croissants (they look like little Eiffel towers before you roll them), whilst the halves became pain au chocolats and the thirds became danishes of various kinds. These were then egg-washed and placed in a clingfilmed tray to proof overnight. Kim told us that for pastries, the temperature and atmosphere are hugely important because they are so delicate. This is one of the reasons they are so difficult to recreate at home.

In the morning, our pastries had transformed themselves into poofy puffy clouds of light fluffiness. We egg-washed them again before decorating with fruits, seeds and chocolate.

These formed part of our breakfast on Sunday morning. One of the other participants (Adee) had brought some raw heather honey from his bees (I have the rest of the jar in my pantry now – Adee said he doesn’t sell the heather honey so this is a total treasure) and I took some of this years marmalade to share. I also brought my latest granola which I’ve been making with heather honey (recipe coming soon) and which I wanted to share with everyone. We thus ate a breakfast of kings with butter, honey, marmalade and croissants (is there a childhood story here about this breakfast? There might be I think.) There was also sourdough slices and these rather magical buns:

These buns are made from stuffing the croissant dough into a muffin tray. They are made from the half rectangle shape that makes a pain au chocolat but we filled them with date syrup (and I put some chocolate slices in mine) and then placed them in the muffin trays to proof. In the morning Kim baked them off (they don’t need egg washing or anything) and then as soon as they came out of the oven tipped them out (because the syrup causes the buns to stick to the tray as they cool) and covered them in cardamom sugar whilst still hot. The result is a fragrant sticky flaky bun that is the stuff of dreams.

I intend to make more of the magical buns this coming weekend, which is a bank holiday weekend and for which all I have planned is writing, writing and more writing so these will see me through I think.

This was a truly wonderful birthday present. And I heartily recommend the course for anyone even remotely thinking about making bread with sourdough…

Small Food Bakery

Primary, 33 Seely Road Nottingham

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning workshop costs £190. Places are available for July and September workshops.