Croissants: My Journey Back to Paris
I find myself with a lot of time on my hands lately and what I have done to fill this time has brought me so much joy and happiness. I have been able to escape to my kitchen several times a week to bake. This week, I decided to make croissants. I opened up one of my favorite cookbooks, “The Art of French Pastry” and found the recipe I wanted to try.
The process to make croissants, when done right takes 2 days. Total active time is close to just 2 hours. A lot of the process is waiting….waiting for your yeast to bloom…waiting for your dough to rise….waiting for it to chill….etc. Let me tell you, croissants are worth the wait and all the effort! There is nothing like a freshly baked crispy, buttery, flakey delicious croissant!
A lot of people I encounter tell me that they do not enjoy baking because it’s complicated and you have to be precise. I think that is what I love most about baking, all the intricate details of the specific ingredients and the measurements. Below are some tips that help me with the process. Honestly, you do not really have to be an experienced baker to make these croissants if you follow my steps below…
First, I read through the entire recipe at least twice before I begin. I highly recommend that you read through an entire recipe as well as make notes for yourself. The notes I am referring to are explanations of certain terms or processes. If you are not sure on what the recipe is saying, look it up. As an expert self-taught baker, the internet is your friend!
The next important step is make sure you have all the necessary ingredients. I can’t stress enough how important it is to have all of your ingredients out, at the right temperature, and measured before you begin your recipe. This is called Mise en Place, and it really helps the baker enjoy the process and not get stressed. Not sure if you have ever decided to make something and are right in the middle of the recipe when you realize you are missing a key ingredient. This is so frustrating. If you pull all of your ingredients and measure them ahead of time, you avoid this very frustrating experience. While we are on the topic of ingredients, it is so important to use quality ingredients to get the best result in flavor and texture. Make sure your vanilla extract is good quality, that your butter is real butter, and that your shelf products like baking powder and baking soda are fresh. Did you know that baking powder and baking soda have a shelf life of just 6 months! These two are so inexpensive, I recommend purchasing a new set next time you are at the grocery store to have when you are ready to bake. A trick I use is that I write on the bottom of the can of baking powder/soda the date I opened the package that way I know that they are still fresh.
Another key component to baking is patience. Especially with this recipe, it took two days before I could enjoy a croissant. There are other recipes I have tried that take 3-4 days.
Okay now about this specific recipe….
Day 1: Making the Dough
It wasn’t complicated at all to make the dough for the croissants. I had to do something that I hadn’t done before which was making a Poolish. I haven’t had to do this before, but it really wasn’t that difficult. The most important time when working with yeast, is the temperature of your water. Yeast can die if your water is too hot, and if its too cold it will not bloom/activate. I use active dry yeast, so this process is very important to ensure that my yeast is alive and will thrive in this recipe. So the recipe states that I should temper my yeast, water, and flour so that combined they are a certain temperature. I will admit, I skipped this step. I decided to bloom my yeast for 10 minutes in 107 degree F. water, then once the yeast was active I sprinkled with the flour and let it rest for another 5 minutes. I mixed this up to create the Poolish. I remember whispering to myself, “I sure hope this works” and folks, it did! Once the Poolish was ready, I could move on to making the croissant dough. I mixed in all my ingredients and let my mixer and dough hook do most of the work. I did however, notice that the dough was a bit lumpy when I removed it from the bowl of my stand mixer. I floured my work surface and gently kneaded the dough until it felt a little smoother. I knew that I had to be gentle and not knead it too long as the more you knead dough the more gluten is formed which would cause the dough to be challenging to roll out later.
Of course with most yeasted doughs, the next step is to allow the dough to rise. I placed my dough in a bowl, sprinkled it with flour, covered it with a towel and left it alone in my draft free warm’ish kitchen for 90 minutes.
Once the dough had risen, I gently removed it from the bowl, shaped it into a round disk, wrapped it and chilled it for an hour. Next step for this first part of the recipe is the key ingredient…BUTTER!! Not just any regular old butter… no this recipe calls for delicious, creamy, fatty European butter with a fat content of 82%. I was fortunate to score 6 pounds of this delicious butter at an incredible price recently.
A big step in making croissants is meticulously and carefully adding butter in between layers of your dough. You do this by the fold method. See my video below at 6:50 you will see how I wrap the dough around the butter and make my first fold. I did this fold twice on day one allowing the dough to chill in the fridge for 30 minutes between each fold. After the second fold, I placed my dough in the fridge and didn’t think about it again until the following day. Well, that is a lie, every time I opened the fridge I saw my little rectangle shaped croissant dough sitting there… doing its magic…anxiously anticipating that first bite of a delicious flaky croissant.
Day 2: Shaping and Baking the Croissants
I have to say that the best part of this recipe for me is on day 2, when I was able to form the croissants. I absolutely love the way they look all rolled up, I can see all the beautiful laminated layers full of butter, that layers that are a result of the folds I did, the layers that will create that flaky buttery tender croissant.
Brushing them with the egg was was so satisfying. I loved seeing my little pastries glisten in all of their butter layer glory. Of course, there is some more waiting in between the process. First step is folding the dough for the third and final fold. By this time the butter and dough are very cold, I had to leave my dough out for a bit before I could work with it and even then I noticed that the butter was cracking and separating. I made myself stop and let it rest for another 5 minutes and then I was able to roll it out. Then I made the final fold and back in the fridge for another 30 minutes. After the final 30 minutes of chilling out in the fridge, I rolled the dough out again and was able to make my cuts. Then I was able to roll them up into the beautiful little round croissants. Guess what the next step is…if you guesses baking, you are unfortunately wrong my friend. The next step is to wait a little longer while these little beauties rise for the final time. Once the croissants were shaped, I placed them on a cookie sheet and allowed them to rest and rise for 90 minutes. After this time, I lightly brushed them with 2 coats of egg wash and baked them for 20 minutes.
Let me just tell you that the smell of croissants baking in the oven is intoxicating! I could smell the butter all the way upstairs and I wasn’t mad about it. They should make a butter candle… I would buy that! When I took them out of the oven I think I may have screamed a little, because I was just so satisfied with the way they looked. Then of course, I had to wait…again. But not for too long. I let them cool on the baking sheet for about 4 minutes then removed them to a cooling rack and I snuck a taste then. They were still very warm and so buttery and flaky! Definitely worth the minor burn on the roof of my mouth! After about 30 minutes they were room temperate and ready to be devoured. I prefer a little strawberry jam with my croissants so I plated a croissant, a little jam and made an iced latte. This was such a treat! I honestly haven’t had a good croissant since the last time I was in Paris. Since we cannot travel right now due to circumstances out of our control, I brought a little piece of Paris to me. I sat down and began tearing into the delicate, buttery, did I already say how flaky they were…O M G…delicious croissant!
I was immediately taken back to the first day we arrived in Paris and we were walking to our apartment down Rue Montorgueil, passing all the beautiful cheese, meat, and pastry shops. Before we reached our apartment, I stopped at three different shops to buy pastries to eat along the way, the first of which was a croissant. Before you judge me for indulging, after my first trip to Paris I promised myself that if I had the chance to go back, I would eat every pastry I wanted and fully enjoy myself.
This is why I love baking so much. The whole experience takes me to a place of happiness and pure joy! I was able to escape for a moment to a place that I love to visit, that I cannot wait to return to…Paris.