DIFFICULTY LEVEL: DIFFICULT
Who doesn’t want to make fresh croissants at home? Although a more challenging recipe and process, I find that the extra work is well worth it when you bite into one of these tender, crispy and aromatic treats.
Croissant
Ingredients
Poolish
- 195 g ABC+ 11.5% Bread flour
- 195 g Water
- 1/16 tsp Yeast See note in instructions
- 1/16 tsp Salt See note in instructions
Final dough
- 764 g ABC+ 11.5% Bread flour
- 124 g Sugar
- 20 g Salt
- 12 g Osmotolerant Yeast (Gold label) See note in instructions
- 4 g Diastatic Malt
- 38 g Butter (unsalted)
- 380 g Poolish Note: a little less than you made
- 275 g Water
- 134 g Milk
Instructions
- Divide your sugar in half (62g) and reserve some water from the 275g called for in the recipe (hold back about 50g).
- Put everything in the mixer except for the 62g sugar and 50g water. Mix on speed 2 for 5 minutes and then check dough for a medium consistency. Flip the dough over in the mixer to encourage an even mix.
- Add in the 62g of sugar and 50g water. Continue mixing on speed 2 another 5 minutes (10 min total now). You should have good gluten development and an improved mix. Mix another 3-4 minutes if not or add a fold during the bulk fermentation.
- Bulk fermentation 1 hour at 76F
- Scale out two pieces (approximately 850g each) and roll into a loose ball. On a work surface, use a rolling pin to roll out two flat evenly thick rectangles the size of a half sheet pan (10.5" x 16"). Dust your pans with flour and place the rolled out dough inside. Your pan may be a little wider than 10.5", but don't stretch your dough wider than 10.5". Try to keep the dough pieces symmetrical and even in thickness. Cover with plastic wrap and place in the refrigerator at least 1 hour (or as long as overnight).
LOCK IN THE BUTTER BLOCK
- Now prepare your two butter blocks. Cut off the zipper of a 1 gallon plastic Ziploc. Cut your butter into four 4oz pieces. Put two pieces in each bag (8oz per bag). Fold the opening and use a rolling pin to pound and roll the butter into the form of the bag. The final size of the rolled out butter in the bag should be 10.5" x 9". Frequently lift the plastic off the butter from both sides to prevent tearing while you do this.
- Place this rolled out butter into the refrigerator for about 10 minutes so it firms up. When ready to use, cut the sides of the bag so only one end (the one opposite from where the zipper was) is still intact. Carefully peel off one side of the bag from the butter, put it back on, flip it over, and do the same thing on the other side. This releases the butter from the plastic.
- Take the cooled dough out of the refrigerator and turn it over onto your work surface. Roll out the long end so the dimension of the dough is closer to 10.5"x18". It is important now that your dough and butter are the same consistency. If the butter is really firm, wait until it softens slightly so it matches the way the dough feels.
- When ready, pull off one side of the butter plastic again and center the butter onto your rectangular dough. The 10.5" portion of butter fills the narrow portion of the dough rectangle which is also 10.5". In other words, the butter and dough edges should line up.
- Now pull one end of the dough up and onto the center of the butter. Do the same thing with the other side. Press the two ends together so the seams are sealed. You have something that is now roughly a square 10.5" x 10.5" in dimensions and the butter no longer showing. Take your rolling pin and gently roll it along the seam until you have a rectangle that is about 9" wide and 27" long (1:3 ratio of width to length).
FIRST AND SECOND TURN
- Now that you have a 9" x 27" dough piece, fold over a piece around 1/3 the length (about a 9" piece). Now fold from the bottom another 1/3 piece over the top. You end up with with a square-shaped 3-ply piece of dough. It's important that you don't make these folds so you leave a gap between the edges and the fold. You can pull things apart and reposition several times until you have it right. This completes the first turn. *Please refer to the pictures below and to these instructions each time a turn is called for. When rolling out and stretching the dough, you need to make sure your works surface and your dough is well-floured.
- Now that you have a 3-ply folded piece of dough, rotate it 90 degrees and then roll it out again into a 9" x 27" piece. Exactly as above, do another turn. After you have done these two turn for both dough pieces, wrap them in plastic and place in the refrigerator for at least 1 hour to chill.
THIRD TURN
- After an hour, take out the dough pieces. On a floured work surface, roll out each piece again to 9″ x 27″. Remember that you are rolling the dough 90 degrees from where you rolled it last time. In other words the sides that are folded become the new ends of the stretched dough. As before, you end up with a square 3-ply piece of dough. Re-wrap it in plastic and place back in the refrigerator for 1 hour.
SHEETING
- Take out your chilled dough. On a well-floured work surface, roll out both dough pieces to approximately 10″ x 16″. Re-wrap and place in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.
- Take out the 10" x 16" pieces and, on a well-floured surface, roll each piece out further to 10" x 24". Make sure you roll them out with uniform thickness. The final dough will be approximately 1/8" thick.
CUT AND SHAPE
- Use a round pizza cutter to carefully cut the long edges of the stretched dough so you have straight clean lines. Put aside the scraps for later use (monkey bread).
- Using a long knife (at least 12", like chef's knife or similar), cut 80-90g sized triangles from the dough. You should get about 12 triangles per dough piece for a grand total of 24 triangles. Set scraps aside for later. If you cut a triangle that is too small, just make a smaller croissant from it.
- Stretch the dough triangles so they are about twice as long as what you started with. Place the wide end on an unfloured surface away from you and begin to roll it towards you. Place the rolled pieces on a baking sheet with parchment paper.
- Once all your croissants are rolled out, egg wash them. Avoid placing egg wash on the sides where the layers are and try to only wash the flat surfaces. Egg wash is made with 1/2 yolk + 1 whole egg mixed together.
- Proof for about 2-3 hours at 80F – longer if it is cooler. You know the croissants are proofed when you jiggle the baking tray and the dough moves as it would if it were made of Jello.
BAKING
- Make sure to start your oven and set it to 400F approximately 1 hour before baking.
- When fully proofed, very carefully do a SECOND egg wash just like you did the first. Be extra careful to brush gently to avoid damaging the croissants.
- Place in the oven at 400F. After 5 minutes, lower the oven temperature to 375F. Rotate the tray in the oven at this point to obtain an even bake. The croissants are very delicate at this point so do it carefully.
- Bake for about 22 minutes total with at least one more oven rotation around minute 15. The croissants should be medium brown in color and darker where you placed the egg wash.
- Place on cooling racks. Croissants are best consumed within 3 hours of coming out of the oven. You can freeze in a airtight container or bag what you don't eat.
Notes
The Process
Should you decide to take up this challenge, you will be rewarded with incredibly tender, satisfying and flavorful croissants. You don’t have any idea what a croissant is supposed to feel like in your mouth or taste like on your tongue until you’ve tried a competently made fresh croissant out of the oven. In France, this is the type of viennoiserie that is made continually throughout the day. When it’s been sitting around for more than 2-3 hours…it’s considered old.
Let’s compare a properly layered home-made croissants to the kind you buy at Safeway or Costco that have no discernible layers, have been parbaked, frozen, re-baked and stored for days on the shelf: Frankly, and forgive me from sounding bourgeoisie, but I don’t think those supermarket versions deserve the label “Croissant” on the package.
If you have some experience under your belt with baking, this is a challenge worth taking. You will not regret it. If you are fairly new to this stuff, I recommend you build up experience on less challenging but highly rewarding breads like my favorite sourdough.
Alright then, let’s do this!!
POOLISH
As with many recipes I use, this one incorporates a preferment. This one uses a poolish to improve extensibility and to improve flavor and aroma. Mix it about 12-16 hours before it’s needed. Avoid overfermenting to the point it starts to collapse.
MIXING
Make the final dough by adding everything except for half the sugar and some of the water. Mix on speed 2 for 5 minutes until everything is well incorporated, the dough should have a medium consistency.
Now flip the dough over in the KitchenAid bowl so it mixes more evenly. Add the second half of the sugar and the water you held back. Sugar is hygroscopic. This means it absorbs a lot of water. When you hold back some sugar, it prevents it from taking away water from the gluten that needs it for proper development. Mix another 5 minutes for a total of 10 minutes. You should be able to open a gluten window that represents an “improved mix”. If it is not, mix another 3-4 minutes. If it is still not looking well-developed, add a fold 30 minutes into the bulk fermentation.
Allow bulk fermentation to occur for 1 hour at 76F.
PREPARE THE DOUGH
Once bulk fermentation is complete, we want to weigh out two dough pieces. Each one will be about 850g and you can roll them into loose balls. Roll out each ball into a rectangular piece about 10.5″ x 16″ (the approximate size of a half sheet pan). The exact dimensions are not critical, but keeping the dough an even thickness is important. The closer you can get to a nice even rectangle in those dimensions, the better.
Now we place this rectangular piece of dough on a floured baking sheet. This is wrapped in plastic and placed in the refrigerator for at least 1 hour, but you can go as long as overnight. This is a great place to take a break. If you decide to let it go overnight, it’s actually quite convenient – you can just start the rest of the job the following morning.
BUTTER BLOCK
Now we make the butter that will go into the croissant, and this is referred to as the “butter block”. In a production setting, the butter block actually looks more like a block, not like the really thin quarter sheet size we are making; nevertheless, we still call it a butter block. In a bakery that has a sheeter, this is quite easy to do. But most people don’t have a machine like that at home, so we use a 1 Gallon ZipLoc bag to make it. Start by using scissors to cut off the zipper of the bag. The image below shows how the zipper was cut off.
This recipe calls for 16oz (1 lb) of European butter. This is not normal butter. It has a higher fat content and lower moisture than regular butter. This is important because as we stretch and layer the dough later, regular butter is more likely to crack.
The butter I use comes in 16oz blocks (1 lb). I cut the block lengthwise in the middle and then cut each of those pieces lengthwise in the middle again. This yields 4 pieces, each weighing 4 oz.
Place two pieces into each bag you cut the zippers from. Use a rolling pin to pound the pieces and roll butter into the corners. The idea here is to create a thin, rectangular and uniform piece of butter. You will do this twice to obtain 2 butter blocks.
As you roll out the butter, the plastic gets stretched quite a lot (see picture above). That’s why you need to peel off the plastic from both sides of the butter several times as you roll it out. This prevents it from getting stretched too thin and tearing.
I like to make the butter blocks in advance and keep them in the refrigerator. If you want to make them as you need them, that’s fine too. Just put them back in the refrigerator for about 10 minutes to stiffen them up a little. This makes it easier to peel the plastic off later. Trust me on this one…
LOCK IN THE BUTTER
Now you should have 2 chilled pieces of dough in the refrigerator and 2 chilled butter blocks. Take out one of your dough pieces from the refrigerator and bring it to your work area. Take a butter block out and cut the sides off with scissors. This will leave you with a bag that is now only held together by one side only, where up until now there were three sides holding it together.
Carefully peel back the plastic all the way. Now put the plastic back over the butter and flip it over. Gently peel the other side off and put it back on. Doing this will make it easier to release the butter from the plastic.
Now pull off the plastic wrap from your dough and flour your work surface. Gently pull on the sides and corners of the dough so it starts to release from the baking sheet. Now flip it over onto your work area and hopefully it all falls intact onto the floured work surface.
Once you have the dough on your work surface, slightly lengthen it with a rolling pin so your final dimensions are 10.5″ x 18″ (about 2 inches longer than what you started with). This is also a good time to check that the dough firmness is about the same as the butter. The two should be closely matched in consistency. Carefully pull off one side of plastic from the butter and flip the whole thing over onto the middle of the dough.
Now peel off the rest of the plastic bag from the butter. Don’t worry if you have a couple of voids or things are not 100% perfect. Use a scraper to pull off butter remnants from your bag and then use that butter to fill in any holes or corners to make them better.
Now we will lock the butter into the dough. Pull one side up and over to the middle of the butter. Then do the same thing on the other side. Press the seam down so you seal it well. You should now have an approximately 10.5″ x 10.5″ square dough that sandwiches butter between the top and bottom.
Notice in the picture above that the seam is going from top to bottom. We are now going to stretch the dough in this top-bottom direction so it becomes 9″ x 27″. Make sure to dust your work surface with plenty of flour and also throw flour on the dough. You need things to move smoothly. If things start sticking to your roller or the table, it will get messy. Don’t hesitate to flip the dough over, rotate it 180 degrees or some other movement – anything to prevent the dough from being overworked in one area only. You need the dough to stay an even thickness.
Whenever we roll out a dough for each turn, we maintain an approximate 1:3 ratio of width to length. In our case, that’s always going to be 9″ x 27″.
Now that we have a 9″ x 27″ piece of dough that is evenly rolled out, we will turn it. This is the layering step that makes a croissant a croissant. If you rolled out the dough thin enough and did 8 turns, you would end up with puff pastry. For croissants, 3 turns is perfect.
TURNING THE DOUGH
To turn (layer) the dough, simply pull the top up and over about 2/3 of the way down. Then fold the bottom over the top of that to end up with something that is shaped like a thick square again. It’s important that the three layers are aligned correctly. Avoid a situation where you have an air gap between the folded areas and the dough ends. This is best explained by referring to the pictures.
We will now do the second turn. Rotate the dough 90 degrees so the folded portion faces you. Remember to re-dust your work surface with flour. Make sure the dough can be easily slid around on the table at all times.
Begin rolling out another 9″ x 27″ rectangle, only this time you will be doing it 90 degrees to the direction you did it before.
Stretching it out again to 9″ x 27″ the second time is a little harder. You may need to flip it over and work it from both directions. Sometimes, hanging an end off the corner of your work surface helps. Gravity creates a little tension on the dough and helps stretch things out better. Go ahead and do the same thing with your second piece of dough.
So now we have completed the second turn out of three on both your dough pieces. Before we do the third and final turn, we need to put the dough back in the refrigerator to cool down. If the butter warms up too much, it will get absorbed by the dough and then we won’t get proper layering in the final product. I know it’s hard to be patient, but cover the two folded pieces you made with plastic wrap and place in the refrigerator for 1 hour.
After 1 hour, we will be able to do our third and final turn. You will do this exactly as we did the other two. With the folds facing you, roll out the dough to 9″ x 27″ and stretch the ends over each other as you did before.
Guess what we do now? You got it! Back to the refrigerator for another hour.
SHEETING
After an hour you have two pieces of dough that are chilled and have been turned 3 times each. We will now begin the process to sheet the final dough into the proper shape. Take the dough pieces out of the refrigerator and roll each piece out to approximately 10″ x 16″. Let’s not let things get messed up now! Put the pieces on your baking sheets, wrap with plastic and send them back to the refrigerator for 30 minutes to cool down again. We really need everything to stay at the right temperature.
After 30 minutes, continue stretching the dough further to 10″ x 24″. Be sure your dough is evenly thick. This is the final step before you cut your pieces to make croissants. Congratulations on getting this far!
CUT
Now that we have a 10″ x 24″ sheet ready to go, we will first trim the edges slightly so the borders are nice and clean. This will help with your final shaping. You’ll also need a LONG knife to cut about 12 triangles out of this dough. Your knife needs to be at least 12″ long to make this work. Avoid round pizza cutters that will give you cuts that are not very straight. I use a cutter like this one which works really well for pizza, obviously, but for this purpose too.
Using your long knife or cutter, make triangles that weight about 80g to 90g each. You should be able to get at least 12 triangles from each dough piece for a total of 24 triangles.
Don’t worry about the scraps. Just chop them up, mix with cinnamon, sugar and chocolate chips. Toss that together and allow to proof 2-3 hours. Bake it for about 25 minutes and you have Monkey Bread!! Yum!! Ok, but let’s get back to the business at hand…
SHAPE
Now we are ready to shape. Take a dough triangle and gently stretch it out so it is around double in length. Place the stretched piece on your work surface and then stretch out the wide portion (the base of the triangle) so it becomes even wider. Now carefully roll it up from back to front. Place your croissant on a parchment lined baking tray. When rolling out croissants, you should avoid having flour on your work surface. Too much flour and the dough will slip and slide instead of rolling up.
EGG WASH
Create an egg wash. To do this you’ll need 1 egg yolk mixed with 2 whole eggs. But you don’t really need that much for 24 croissants. I use 1 whole egg and half a yolk. You also need a fairly delicate brush to avoid damaging the croissant. These brushes have served me well and they are of good quality. Carefully brush egg wash on but try to avoid the sides. If you get too much wash on the layered sides, it will prevent the croissant from opening up as well in the oven.
PROOF AND BAKE
We’re almost there! Now that the croissants are egg washed, we let them proof. Ideally they would sit at 80F and 80% humidity for 2-3 hours. I don’t have a proof box, so I place the croissants in my oven and get the temperature to 80F. I then place a cup of boiling water inside to get the humidity up. This works fairly well. Croissants are well proofed when they grow substantially in size and they move like Jello when you jiggle the baking tray a little.
When fully proofed and ready to bake, brush on one more layer of egg wash. This is time consuming but worth it. Once your second layer of egg wash is on, place your croissants in a 400F oven. After 5 minutes, reduce the temperature to 375F. I usually rotate the tray in the oven at this 5-minute point to get an even bake. But be careful! Don’t disturb the croissants too much, as they are not fully set yet. You may want to rotate them one more time after another 7-8 minutes. After 22 minutes they should be done. The croissants will have a deep brown color all over, but they should not be burnt. Place them on a cooling rack.
Did you muster up the courage to try this recipe? Did it work out? Any tips, questions or other comments to share? Please rate this recipe and give your feedback below.
Definitely a hard one. First attempt, nice layers but did not achieve the elusive honeycomb. My final proof I think was too cold ( I put the croissants back in the fridge overnight ) rookie mistake. And, I don’t have a mixer and when you do this by hand I think the butter gets a bit separated during the first kneed. And I used salted butter ( bad baker) Also it is difficult to get the bake perfect….great outer crust, tiny bit of moisture in the middle that may have required a lower and slower convection. Edible and pretty. Now… Read more »
It sounds like you figured out all the missteps and you know what to do next time. The fun of this is the pursuit itself more than the final product, at least for me 🙂 Keep at it and let me know if you need help along the way.