Pains au Chocolat

As with the croissants, the resulting pastry has crisp outer layers and a tender interior but this time they envelop a luscious chocolate filling. Also as with the croissants, this “recipe” just provides the instructions for shaping, proofing and baking this dough.

The recipe calls for cacao barry chocolate batons, 2 per pastry. I used Callebaut bittersweet chocolate callets that have slightly higher cacao content instead. I’m not sure if the batons are 3g or 5 g each but I used ~14-16 callets (~7-8g), which is the number that fit comfortably inside the dough; the ratio of chocolate to dough worked out well.

The finishing touch before proofing and again before baking is an egg wash that’s first put through a strainer. I hesitated but ended up doing this step…..what was another 2 minutes when I’d already spent 3 days making these ; )

These were a huge hit.