Croissants

This recipe scared me. I've wanted to make croissants for years but laminated doughs just freaked me out! I really wanted to try this recipe knowing that with Peter's hand holding, I probably could do it. But if I wouldn't have had the goal of making every recipe in this book, I would have probably chickened out!

I'm glad I didn't! These were incredible!

The recipe wasn't difficult, just time consuming. Mixing the dough was easy, but laminating the butter between layers of dough took nearly all afternoon. Every 20 minutes I was rolling, folding, flouring, and working with this dough. The dough kept springing back on me and I struggled to get it rolled wide enough but finally I had all 81 layers.

The cutting and forming of rolls was simple enough and I impatiently waited for the dough to rise so we could get these in the oven. But baking these rolls was not without it's own difficulties. All that butter started to melt out of the rolls. I had mistakenly placed these rolls on a flat baking sheet. Butter dripping on the oven coils caused flame ups and soon my kitchen was filled with smoke! Good time to check the smoke detector!

But the result was lovely despite the extra flames. I love how the layers separated inside. And one bite of these...Mmmmm!

The next pan I baked, I made sure had sides which avoided any flame problems. My husband enjoyed these for egg sandwiches for several mornings. I'm not sure this recipe will become a regular with all the extra effort involved but at least now I don't have to be intimidated by croissants! Thank you, Peter!

I love croissants, but unfortunately I don’t really get them that often because there aren’t many places that sell good croissants, so I was eager to try this recipe to see if I could do it myself.

Incorporating the detrempe was a fairly involved process, but the recipe was very detailed and easy to follow. The only think I had trouble with was matching the dough to the butter block, so future laminations would be successful at creating many layers of dough and butter.

Rolling out the final dough to the required 24-28 by 9 inches by ¼ inch thick took some time. By the time I rolled it out and cut the dough into triangles, it started to get difficult to work with. When trying to form the croissants the dough started to get warm, very sticky and hard to form a nice looking croissant, especially for this being my first time forming croissants. Next time I might cut the dough in half (or even fourths) before the rolling out the final dough and leave the other half refrigerated.

You can see by the pictures that they don’t really look like croissants, but it was pretty difficult to work fast with warm dough for the first time.

I applaud Peter for all the detail of this recipe and all the step by step photos because without them this recipe would be even more difficult.

The end product was unbelievable! They were perfectly buttery, flaky and delicious. They were so addicting I couldn’t stop when they had appropriately cooled from the oven.

They also lasted a really long time. They were also great toasted with breakfast in the morning.

My first time making croissant or any kind of laminated dough. It wasn't as difficult as I had feared, but not easy either. The primary challenge I had was rolling out the dough--when I roll out dough, it tends to form tapering "tails" instead of being nice and square. So none of my letter folds were perfect, since a slightly rounded edge doesn't square up properly. So my final "loaf" of dough was a bit lopsided. And rolling it out... I could never get 27 inches across. The dough sprung back quite a bit. So my croissants were quite thick. Finally, in all that rolling, I did break some layers, and quite a bit of butter poured out during baking. I'd definitely bake in a sheet pan with sides for that reason.

All the "disasters" accounted for... in the end my croissants looked pretty darn good! And they tasted amazing. Pretty much the best I've ever had, taste wise. I used half the dough to make cheese danish, and.... wow. So good. The cheese filling compresses the puff and almost caramelizes the dough. Awesome.

I used half King Arthur bread flour and half AP. I think I would try all AP next time. And it was a very warm day... might wait for a cooler day, too.

But I will definitely try again!