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WARNING!: This post is long, as is the croissant making process... enjoy:) oh, but I've got pretty pictures so that should make up for it!)
Goooooooood morning to my Sunday hangover :)
Seriously, it came out of nowhere, really? after 2 beers I'd get wasted, what happened to the old me and where did this new, lightweight, me come from? yikes! The wastedness that ensued after those beers came out of nowhere, I even contemplated the possibilitiy of someone slipping something in my beer.... suspisions arise!!!! After my heart pounding in my head, and a brief encounter between my face and the toilet (yes), I woke up alive and semi- well this morning!!
Anyways, on to more important things!!! I love croissants! I do indeed. My dad's family lives in france and every time we visited, the second we got off that plane I first, thanked the lord I was alive, and secondly my uncle would pick us up and drive us to a boulangerie to get fresh croissants and breads! mm mm mm! So, now that I'm in school and I've learned how to make croissants, you bet your bottom dollar I'd started making them at home!
Whenever I make them, I freeze them, then pull some out saturday night to defrost and proof so that by sunday morning they'd be ready to bake and I'd have a delicious sunday brunch! Here are some photos of the making, proofing, baking process.
woohoo pretty pictures! So, I have a mac, and I'm not computer or tech savy or anything... so the only image editing software I have is this ComicLife! application, hence the comic feel? so here are the ingredients followed by the steps that will hopefully correlate to the above pics :)
Croissants!
(i got this recipe from here (note: I've done this a total of 3 or 4 times, the most recent turned out best so i'm going to explain my way :) ) )
dough a deer
1 # 2oz AP Flour
5 oz Cold Water
5 oz Cold Milk
2 oz Granulated Sugar
1 1/2 oz Unsalted Butter
1tbs + 1/2tsp Instant Yeast
2 1/4 tsp Salt
butter layer
10 oz Unsalted Butter
1/8 c Flour
(
key: # = lb)
Steps!
day #1
1. Combine all the Ingredients for the dough in a mixer using the dough hook on low speed, once all ingredients are well combined, kick it up a notch to med speed and let it knead for 3 min. If your mixer starts to act up, like mine sorta did a bit, pull that sucker out and knead away for about 5-10 min.
2. Lightly flour a bowl or pyrex. Round out the dough, and plop that bad boy in the bowl/pyrex and cover it and stick it in the fridge over night.
3. Once the dough is in the fridge you can make your butter layer or make it the next day. Either way, I stuck the butter and flour in the mixer, using the paddle attachment, and I let it cream away... then plop that butter mixture on to a piece of clear wrap you are going to use to wrap it up and shape it into a square a 5 to 6 inch square.
day #2
1. pull out the dough in the morning and let the dough proof for a few hours. Pull the butter out an hour or two before you plan on doing the following steps. You need the butter to be at a nice soft room temperature, not melty though, so when you do the laminating process, the butter will be easily dispersed.
Picture time!
(these next steps follow the pictures! in case that little header wasn't clear enough for you)
1-6. Lightly flour the surface of a table. Unwrap that ball of dough and slice an X on top. Then roll out each segment of the X to form a T. When rolling out each segment
do not roll directly from the center, you want to leave a nice mound of dough in the center, at least an inch thickness. Then you place your butter layer on that thick part of the dough, the center, and pull each flap over to cover that delicious fatness up. When covering make sure that there is no way the butter can peek out and say hello. You want that sucker trapped in the layers of dough! Also make sure to brush away any excess flour that may be on each flap. As you can see in picture 6, you'll have a wonderful little square of buttery doughy goodness :)
7-9. The laminating process begins!! Now is the time where you search in your mind and try to find something or someone that pissed you off recently, channel that aggression and anger and with your rolling pin, pound that little square of butter and dough down! Pound away my friend, pound away! Then you'll want to roll it 8 x 24.... as you can see in my photo it's not exactly 24in long, so just make sure you have a good enough length to it so you can fold it in thirds, as shown in the picture. Once you've rolled it out and did the tri-fold, wrap it up, stick it in the fridge and let it rest for 20 min. You're going to do this 3 times.
Also! An important thing, when rolling out the dough, make sure the seems are at the length.. see in picture 7 at the ends its ugly looking.... yeah so always roll the dough out leaving the seams at the ends and fold the ugliest looking seem when doing the first fold!
10-12. (apparently I suck at counting, haha not really, I just forgot to number picture 12, 12.) After the third time laminating, you pull the dough out after its 20 min of nap time and you roll it out to 24in, for real this time, and do the book fold! Wrap it up, stick it in the fridge and wait for day 3!
(cool semi-fact: I say semi- fact because I don't know the exact number, but by doing this laminating process of rolling and folding, you create something like 1,4?? layers of butter and dough! Cool hu?)
day #3
13. Pull the dough out, a rolling pin, and get your guns (i.e. your super strong arms!) prepared because you're now going to roll that piece of dough out to 44 in long! 8x44! You can see I use a measuring tape for this part :) Don't forget to lightly flour the surface you're working on!
14a. Shit! I forgot to number the picture above #14!! ugh!! asdkjhas! So! Picture above 14, once you got to 44in, using a ruler or measuring tape, at the top of this long strip, put marks every 5 inches. Then at the bottom go in 2 1/2 in and from there mark every 5in (i.e. put a mark on the bottom part of this dough in the middle of the top 2 marks.... if that makes sense?!)
14b. The actual #14 so from that first bottom mark, with a knife or preferably a pizza wheel (it's easy and fun!) make a slanted line from there to the mark preceding that (from the left) on top . Does this make sense?! It's so freaking hard to write!!!
15. Once you have those slanted lines done in #14 you do them in the other direction making triangles.
(if this is all complicating sounding, like it is, maybe just do 5in marks on the top, and cut straight lines down from top to bottom, then just do diagonal lines through each little rectangle and bam you'd got your triangles. I'm going to try that next time and see how it goes, easier i'm sure... i've just been doing it the way that site says and its just complicating for no freakin reason!)
16. Now you want to widen the top of the triangles and stretch out the length of it. As a note, if you're doing this and it's really hot in your kitchen, you want to work fast because heat and butter don't work well together. And when you're done stretching, in hot kichen, maybe stick these bad boys in the fridge for 20 min to rest and harden up a bit before rolling.
17-18. (once again i forgot to number a picture correctly) Once you have all the triangles stretched, roll them up yo! At school we make some ham and cheese ones, and almond ones and chocolate ones! The chocolate ones are done a bit differently, shape wise, but the others use this shape. So, either roll them up plain or roll up some kinda filling in them! In this picture sequence I rolled them up plain and stuck them in that pan, then stuck them in the freezer. Once frozen I put 2-3 in a plastic bag so I only eat a few at a time because my ass does not need to get any bigger ;)
So there ya have it!! Croissant making!!! I don't have a proofing picture.. well I do but it's pointless. Basically, when I know I want to have croissants for a certain day, I just pull out the frozen ones, stick them on a pan and let them sit overnight to defrost and proof. Sometimes they proof well and they puff up 2x the original size, and sometimes they don't. This is only because I don't have an actual legit proofing box or setting on my oven, so proofing for me is just letting it sit out over night.
Baking!
Set the oven to 425, once that's preheated and ready to go, brush some egg on the croissants, stick the croissants in the oven and set your timer to 8 min. Once the 8 min is up, rotate the pan and set the timer for another 8 min. Then BAM! your croissants should be done! Don't be afraid if it looks like it's browning too much before the 8 min is up because that doesn't necessarily mean that the inside is done. Also, my oven is most probably different than yours, so you might have to do a few trials before you figure out the right timing.
Trifecta!
This is what most of my Sunday mornings consist of: Coffee, James Dean, and a croissant or two! Along with an egg or salad but hands down, no doubt those 3 are always involved!
So, if you have any questions about this process or anything, leave a comment or shoot me an email!
Enjoy!
