Croissants

CREDITS

Adapted from various recipes.

INGREDIENTS

¼ cup room temperature water½ cup milk, cold1 egg, cold
3 tablespoons sugar½ teaspoon salt200g butter, ice-cold and cubed2 and ½ cups flour + more as needed2 teaspoons yeast

METHOD

Whisk water, milk and egg together and set aside.
Place all the other ingredients into a food processor and pulse until you get thumbnail-size blobs of butter.
Then add the liquid. Pulse only once or twice.
Tip out onto a large piece of clingwrap/foil.Use your hands to bring it into a rough ball, catching all the flour. It will look quite rough with lots of big butter blobs. Don't knead the dough! Wrap the dough up tightly in Clingwrap or foil.
Refrigerate for 4 hours.
Take out dough, dust your surface generously with flour. Roll dough into a rectangle and fold like a letter. (The butter might cut through and be sticky, just sprinkle flour and continue rolling.)
Chill 15 minutes.
Rotate and roll, then fold. Use as much flour for dusting as needed. You will still be able to see the butter through the dough but it won't be as hard, it will start stretching out. These will turn into lovely flakes when baked.
Chill 15 minutes.
Now rotate and roll for the third time. Fold, wrap in your foil again. Isn't it amazing how that rough heap of flour and butter has transformed into a smooth dough?
Refrigerate for at least an hour, up to 24 hours.
Dust counter lightly with flour. Now roll dough into a very large rectangle (20 cm x 100 cm).
To make large croissants, with a yield of 15, these were our measurements:Mark the top of the dough at 12,5 cm intervals along the length (7 marks in total). Now, at the bottom of the dough make a mark at 6,25 cm. Then continue to make marks at 12,5 cm intervals from this point (8 marks total). Make diagonal cuts starting from the top corner cutting down to the first bottom mark. Then change the angle and make cuts from the other top corner to the bottom mark to create triangles. This way you will end up with 15 triangles and a few end pieces of dough.
Place some filling on the base end of the triangle, not too much, then roll gently closed. Refrigerate your croissants for 30 minutes. This will help solidify it so that it doesn't leak butter in the oven.
Brush tops with egg wash. Remember to line oven tray with baking paper for easy release. Now leave to proof in a cool spot until visibly puffy. Start preheating the oven.Bake croissants for 17-22min on 190°c fan assisted until well golden brown. CHECK EARLY

INFO & TIPS

If you don't have a food processor, use two forks to break down butter into dough. I actually prefer that to the processor- there's much more control!

I've used this for savoury croissants as well as for custard danishes-it's very delicious!

POSTED ON

16 May 2023

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