Pure Butter” Croissants

After presenting you with a variety of layouts, such as the puff pastry, then the inverted puff pastry, having explained the difficult puffing of the Kouign Amanand then went to China with the Su style moon cakes and their puff pastry with lard, in North Africa with the Maareks and M’hadjebs and this oil puff pastry, but also the Baklawas with almonds with a puff pastry in several layers or the Baklawas with pistachios and their filo pastry, I thought we could come back home with the puff pastry. If one has already practiced some of these techniques, then the crescent will be a breeze. Because it’s not that difficult and the result is sensational! The smell of croissants baking in the oven is unique. There are no unavailable products in this recipe. I invite you to come and discover the steps to finally open your warm and delicious croissant!

Recipe for a dozen croissants:

Stick:
20g of fresh yeast (this is essential!)
-100g of soft butter
-500g of flour
-10g of salt
-50g of sugar
-15g of whole milk powder
-240g of warm water
For dough:
-250g of soft butter of the same consistency as the dough

Put the 100g of butter, salt, sugar, milk powder and half the flour in the bowl of the mixer.

Put the yeast and some of the warm water from the 240g in a small bowl. Stir to melt the yeast.

Add the yeast to the bowl.

Start kneading with the hook.

Add water. Continue mixing. The dough will be quite liquid.

Add all the flour and let knead for a good ten minutes. If you do all these steps by hand, you’ll need a lot of elbow grease!

After 10 minutes, roll the dough back into a ball and cut the top with scissors.

Place a cling film in contact with the dough to prevent it from drying out .

Leave to grow for 45 minutes in a room where it is warm enough. You can see that the dough has stretched the film!

Remove the dough from its packaging, then hit it hard enough on the work surface to evacuate the carbon dioxide.

Flatten the dough into a rectangle one centimeter thick, then wrap in cling film. Place on a baking sheet and refrigerate for one hour.

The most important thing in the next step is to have the butter at the same consistency as the chilled dough. You can put the butter in cling film and crush it under the rolling pin to make it more malleable. If it is too hard, you will not be able to make the puff pastry (rise) but if it is too soft, you risk incorporating it into the dough without obtaining alternating layers.

Roll out so that the dough is twice as long as it is wide.

Put the butter in a fairly thin layer in the middle of the rolled out dough, up to the edges of the sides (see photo!).

Fold the sides over the butter towards the center.

Then fold in half. Then turn 90° as shown in the photo to prepare the dough for its first double turn.

Roll out the dough, this time into a rectangle 4 times as long as it is wide. It is necessary to spread calmly but with a little force. The most important thing is to spread evenly.

Fold as before, first the edges towards the center…

Then again in two.

Turn 90° and repeat this step. We then made two double turns.

Fold one last time so that it looks like the picture above. Wrap the dough in cling film and leave in a cool place for 1 or 2 hours. You can also put the dough in the freezer at this time.

Roll out the dough in a 3mm layer (it’s still thinner than on the picture!).

Cut strips of 20 centimeters wide. Then cut triangles of 7 or 8 centimeters wide inside.

Cut the base of the long triangle and spread it a little. We obtain a kind of Eiffel Tower…!

Roll up the triangle fairly tightly. Place the croissants on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.

The next two photos show my first batch with mini croissants.

Here are the large triangles of dough.

Brush gilding (sweetened milk, not egg!) on raw croissants.

Then let it swell for two or three hours.

Preheat the oven to 180°C and then put the croissants in the oven for 25 minutes (always adapt to your own oven!). The kitchen is going to smell truly divine…