Another Challenge

I am glad that I have had a bit of extra time because of this self-quarantine. One of the things I have room for is more baking, particularly challenging baking that takes time or energy.

This time I’ve chosen to attempt croissants. I love this pastry, and if the history is correct the are a French adaptation of an Austrian dessert. I’ve read the instructions many times and the have always felt to be a bit fussy and particular.

I’ve chosen to follow this video, mostly because it seemed simpler than most I have seen. Also, it required the least amount of ingredients. I am finding that pantry staples are getting difficult to find.

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I should also state that I didn’t or couldn’t follow the instructions exactly. I have a digital scale, but it only measures grams in 5g increments. I’ve baked enough that I figured I could get it to work within close estimates.

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Day one followed pretty much as in the video. A little mixing, a little kneading, and then formed into a square packet to rest overnight. The timing wasn’t onerous, but I’m glad that I started early enough. The timing in the video is only if you are practiced. I took much longer.

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Day two was more intensive. The butter envelope was easy enough to make, but I didn’t get the thickness right and I could tell right away that I had the dough to thin. I cut off the excess dough around the butter and pinched it closed. I thought this may cause problems but it didn’t.

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The real problem I had was being impatient. I thought the packet was thawed enough to roll. I even started with pressing and not rolling, but it still wasn’t warm enough. I ended up breaking the butter. You can see all the lovely, flat pieces. I think that I also should have blended the butter into a square better. I pressed together sliced pieces, and didn’t work them together. That was probably the other part of the problem. Oh, well.

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I kept on, partially out of stubbornness, partly out of not wanted to waste ingredients. The dough would roll out. I figured at the worst I would have a decent, butter sweet dough to use for something. It would roll out. But that was a second problem. You can see the indent where the dough resisted. Either I was impatient again, or the dough gluten wasn’t developing well. I substituted regular flour for bread flour, which has a lower protein and gluten content.

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I must not have screwed it up that bad. There are layers! Lots of them! And they look like croissants! Now off to my warming drawer to proof.

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And that was a mistake. I always have trouble with raising anything that doesn’t rise in the fridge overnight or in the bread machine. This was no different. The oven was too warm, even turned off. So I figured I would use the warm drawer set on the lowest temp. But I don’t actually know what that temp is. So they rose, and they were fragile and jiggly as described, but the butter had melted entirely out of them.

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Don’t care. Too far into the process to give up now. And they look better after baking. And they turned out not bad. They smelled great, looked reasonable if misshapen. And they tasted good too. And even with the butter and dough problems earlier, they made plenty of flaky layers.

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Evidently I didn’t fail that bad. I’ll probably try these again now that I have a better idea of what I’m doing. And yes, they aren’t as fussy and particular as most recipes make them out to be.