One of my favorite pastries is the croissant.  They can be found at any coffee shop and pretty much any bakery.  I love the buttery, flaky layers that wrap around and around, but many croissants end up disappointing me.  They are either stale, not done in the middle, or not done enough on the outside.  I like the browned exterior bits the best, tasting almost like a crunchy version of a really richly browned pie crust.

I’ve only made croissants a few times, since it’s a lot of preparation.  The process itself isn’t difficult, just time-consuming.  As I learned this time, it really shouldn’t be rushed.  The recipe I follow is the small-batch version from the Professional Pastry Chef cookbook.  I highly recommend this book as a tome of great knowledge on just about any dessert from meringue to pastry cream, truffles to napoleons.

This batch of croissants didn’t turn out as well as I would have liked, but the basic idea is there, and despite their appearance they are delicious.  These are definitely not the best croissants I’ve made, but they meet what I like in a croissant.  They have a buttery and crispy flaky crust on the outside with just enough soft center to give a contrast.

First you knead butter with a little flour and lemon juice to soften it and give it a chance to stand up to the heat before melting out all over the place.

Next, make a pretty typical yeast dough.  It’s a softer dough than that for bread, and not kneaded as much so it stays much more tender.

Then you roll the dough out a bit bigger than the butter and place the butter on top with the corners of the butter square aligned with the sides of the dough square.  Note how my butter and dough are nowhere near square.

Enclose the butter in dough by bringing up the dough corners and pinching.  This is the first important part.  I always feel like if I don’t close it up right here that all the butter will run out at the slightest increase in temperature.  I think this is one of my first screw-ups, since I left some air pockets in there that ended up forming defects in the finished product.

Now roll it out into a “rectangle”.

Then you do a series of “turns” where you fold it like a brochure.  One third folds in from the left, then one third folds in from the right.  Bring it all together and turn it 90 degrees.  You’ll then roll it out and “turn” it a couple more times.

We’ve now created a laminated (layered) dough.  You start with 3 layers (dough, butter, dough), but in making the turns you create many.  After the first, you have 9.  After the second, 27, then 81, then 243, then 729.  The butter separates the layers of dough and the water within the butter creates steam which puffs it up.  This is how puff pastry gets its puff.

Once we’ve made the dough, it needs to rest in the fridge, but needs to be wrapped tightly, because if the dough dries out, things will crack and break and our butter will escape.

Once it’s rested, you’ll let it come up in temperature a bit, then roll it out, cut strips, then triangles for croissants or rectangles for pain au chocolat.  Roll them up, brush with a beaten egg, bake in a hot oven and try to wait until they’re cool to enjoy any time of day.

My problem was in rushing the process.  There are supposed to be more waiting periods of chilling and/or resting the dough.  I think it would have helped my croissants get bigger.  I also cut them too small, but that just means it’s easier to have more than one!