Croissants: A Photo-Diary
During my first week of vacation between working and starting culinary school, I gave myself a challenge: croissants. I’ve never made puff-pastry and it’s always intimidated me, so I figured a full day off with nothing to do was the perfect time to take the leap.
After some googling, I decided to go with my old standby, America’s Test Kitchen, for their tried and true process. I crossed-checked the process the whole way along against this free website, since their pictures were stunning. I adapted the ATK recipe to fit the 3-day format for my own sanity.
I rolled and folded and chilled.
And rolled and folded and chilled.
I moved to the kitchen table for extra leverage (if you know me, you know I’m… vertically challenged.)
And rolled and folded and chilled.
I moved to the floor for the last roll because my arms were giving out.
I am typically not a precision-focused person, as you’ve probably figured out from, well, every other post I’ve done. But croissants are scary, so precision was a security blanket in this case.
I’m actually really proud of myself for how straight those lines are.
I was really nervous about shaping the croissants, so I watched a ton of videos before proceeding. My French heritage came through for me, though, and I actually had a ton of fun once I got going.
All the articles I’d read said you should be able to see layers on the edges of the dough once it’s cut…
So far, so good!
After a painful overnight refrigeration and 3 hour proof (but it was Christmas morning, so we had plenty to do!), the croissants finally went in the oven.
The house began to fill with the scent of melted butter, which is a completely lovely thing to experience on Christmas.
But, as I suspected, that meant butter was leaking out of the croissants. It’s not supposed to do that–oops.
I’ll have to do some research as to why that happened because the butter-leakage meant that the croissants were crunchier on the outside and squishier on the inside than they should have been.
The imperfections absolutely did not stop us from devouring most of these in a matter of minutes, but as the butter settled and cooled throughout the day, they actually improved.
I’ve been obsessed with croissants ever since our trip to France. While these were nowhere close to the best ones we had there, they did capture a bit of that magic. And frankly, I’m just proud of myself for accepting the challenge!
