db: Croissants

The Daring Bakers go retro this month! Thanks to one of our very talented non-blogging members, Sarah, the Daring Bakers were challenged to make Croissants using a recipe from the Queen of French Cooking, none other than Julia Child!

Oh croissants how I had such high and lofty hopes for you and then they came crashing down in about the span of 8 minutes. When I first got the challenge this month I was pretty excited. I love bread making and was really excited to try out croissants because I love them and because I had never quite been able to talk myself into the challenge.

I studied the recipe and gathered all of my ingredients and started out. I ended up doing it over 2 days instead of trying to cram everything into 12 hours. I mixed and rolled and waited patiently for what I knew was going to be one of my better challenges. I flattened that butter stick and started rolling and folding, rolling and folding. Finally I heated my oven, cut and shaped the dough, and placed them on the cookie sheet. I was ready – I knew I was only about 15 minutes away from amazingness. And then came minute 8. I was sitting there and all of sudden those rolls were smelling heavenly and then they were smelling a little too much and then to my horror they weren’t smelling so heavenly and buttery, but rather they were starting to smell burnt.

I grabbed the first pan out the oven and put the second in and only baked them until they turned golden on the outside, but they weren’t really cooked through on the inside. After all of the excitement died down, I went to my handy shelf of cookbooks and started researching. I found a recipe that was almost exactly what I had used except for one little difference – a 135 degree oven differential! Not sure if the temp on my recipe was a mistake or not, but I was not happy.

Anyways, I took them and shared them the next day with some nutella (this stuff covers all sorts of baking blunders) and the flavor got good overall reports. The flaky layers weren’t there though so I thought that was a let down. I think the under baking had something to do with this but not sure since I’m not familiar with laminated doughs.

Will I make croissants again – sure. I for sure won’t be using the same directions though. That I can promise.

The beginning of the dough - lots of waiting after this stage.After rolling out the first time.ButterReady to begin rolling the butter into the dough.Ready for the too hot ovenRight before I burned all the good stuff outThe first batch - the tops don't look terrible, but the bottoms could have been used as weapons.Under baked and unevenly browned, but at least they didn't break any teeth.