Croissants!

Holy cow! I can make them! Whoa!

In high school, when I was first trying to get into cooking for myself--baking wasn't as central as it has since become--I became interested in making croissants. For some reason, I got into it even after reading the directions, greatly underestimating the commitment and travails involved in preparing the dough, folding in butter, rolling out, cutting and shaping properly; not to mention the rather intense amounts of butter that go into them. (I am pretty sure that commercially made croissants use oils, hydrogenated and otherwise, as well as post-baking preserving techniques to end up with buttery-tasting but not exactly greasy results. Real croissants, as in those of a French style, use strictly butter because the French love their butter so.) All in all, that attempt took me about eight hours of regular but not full-dedicated work for small, pretty hard, and rather measly croissants. They were poorly folded--which I partly blame on the recipe I used--so that butter cooked out of them and into the oven and I underused or did not treat the yeast properly or under proofed them making them less than ideal in appearance.

After watching It's Complicated, in which Meryl Streep and Steve Martin make "spur of th moment" chocolate croissants, I felt inspired to give what had been my biggest frustration again. I checked two different recipes (Budapest Croissants from Wolfgang Puck and Bernard Clayton's French Croissants) and then gave them--predominantly Puck's recipe--a twist of my own by using honey, less butter, and whole wheat pastry flour. In the end, I also played with some of the refrigeration times and roll-outs, which I may continue to do. I used fillings that are absurdly easy to make or improvise. One, of course, was chocolate and the other was a walnuts and brown sugar blend. This recipe is riddled with notes because, if anything, I feel that baking croissants has illuminated how much I have learned about reading recipes, making my own, and interpreting the moods and stages of the ingredients and dough and the like.

Before getting into the recipe itself, I have this to say about succeeding with this recipe. First, don't expect great results if you are doing this by yourself for the first time. It is a time consuming and frustrating recipe and as I said before, the first time I made croissants, it took about one third of the day. This recipe I have gotten down to about a three and a half to five hours period of time; it is an investment and don't doubt it. In addition, I expect this recipe to fail me once or twice as I play more with it, but take it as play, not as work and you can have fun doing it. On my second batch yesterday, after finally rolling out and cutting the dough, I paused the book on CD I was listening to, took a breath, enjoyed the house's silence, and enjoyed the peace of mind and quietude of a particular place at a particular time, doing something I love. It was wonderful and I am absurdly thankful for it. And finally, more practically, use a pastry cloth if you're going to bother to make croissants; they are pretty cheap and make it so much easier.

Enjoy!

~~~

Whole Wheat Croissants (with optional filling)
From 23 January 2010

1/2 cup warm water
1 Tablespoon dry yeast

Blend together thoroughly with a whisk or fork in a bowl, make sure there is enough space for the yeast to bubble. This won't get too active because it does not have any sugars in it, but it will kick in when mixed with the rest. Set aside.

1 pound of whole wheat pastry flour (optionally mix in white all purpose flour)
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 c honey, warm

Optionally, warm a large mixing bowl but running hot water in it and swirling it, then quickly drying it with a clean towel before use. Mix flour and salt in the large bowl, then stir in honey, mixing slightly. An electric mixer may be used.

1 cup milk
1/4 cup cream
or, use 1 & 1/4 cup whole milk

Blend together and warm in the microwave or in a pan. Do not overheat, just warm to the touch.

"Dig" a well in the flour and pour in milk and cover with a layer of flour, then add dissolved yeast and stir together with a wooden spoon or electric mixer until even. It will be wetter than you might expect (it is wetter than I expected), more like a batter than a dough. Place in the fridge and allow to cool 45 minutes; if your fridge has any odors, cover it with plastic wrap to avoid flavor contamination.

(The below has been changed slightly from the original.)
10 oz or 1 & 1/4 cup or 2.5 sticks (they are all the same) of butter

Prepare the butter for placing in the croissants. You can choose to warm and mix the butter together into one pat of butter, or cut into small chucks, or long slivers (I will try the long slivers next time) in preparation. When the dough has cooled, roll out the pastry cloth (or use a clean counter, but the dough is much more likely to stick) and sprinkle generously--and yes, I mean generously--with flour. (I usually use white because it allows more flexibility since white flour absorbs less water than wheat and, therefore, has that little bit more flexibility for error.) Pour out the dough, scraping out the edges of the bowl and set aside the bowl. sprinkle the top with flour as well as your rolling pin, and roll out, forming a rough four-leaf clover, or at least a rectangle, it doesn't matter that much. Place the prepared butter in the center and fold the "leaves" or corners over it entirely; then, loosely wrap the cloth around the dough "parcel" and refrigerate. If you have a large resealable container, place it in there, or otherwise cover, but this is not necessary. Allow to refrigerate another 45 minutes, which cools the butter to the temperature of the butter and dough to make rolling, folding, and turning easier.

Here is "turning," though it probably has other names. This process builds the layers of pastry and disperses the butter evenly, but not uniformly the way it is in breads with oils baked in. After the wrapped dough parcel has cooled--some recipes call for as long as six hours in the fridge, but I do not think that that is strictly necessary--pull out and unwrap gently. Using plenty of flour to avoid breaking the dough's surface, roll out the dough to about 16x9 inches; exact measures are less important than making the dough pretty thin to ensure good folding. Fold the long edge one-third of the way over, then fold the bottom third over that, as you might a letter; then turn the dough and fold the short edge, now about 3 inches wide, over similarly to make another small parcel of dough. If you are feeling tricky and the dough is particularly cool, you can try to repeat this process again; if you do, check the edges for enough flour to avoid sticking and breaking the dough. Wrap up the parcel again and refrigerate for another 30-45 minutes, then repeat the folding. You should make at least five rounds of folding, but you can repeat more to make slightly yeastier and increasingly flaky croissants.

1 egg white
About 1 tspn of honey

Refrigerate one final time, start the oven at 400 F, place baking sheets in the oven, mix the egg white and honey for an egg wash, then roll out the dough as you have done before. Fold the top side down, then the bottom up as you have done, then roll out to the left and right. You may want to cut the dough in half to give yourself more space, and half the dough will fill most baking sheets with a dozen small croissants, so it works out pretty well to do so. Cut the dough in triangles, either by a zigzag or by cutting rectangles and halving them with a diagonal cut. These can be of various widths, but four inches on the triangular base makes a good size croissant. Take one triangle, optionally fill the base to midway up the triangle with a filling, and roll from the base to the tip tightly. Bend the ends around to make the crescent shape and set aside. About a dozen fit on baking sheet. Pull out one of the hot baking sheets and grease--try using the butter wrapper and run it over them, but they will sizzle, so be careful. Place the croissants on the hot, greased baking sheet, allowing space for them to proof. Spread egg wash over the croissants using a cooking brush or a paper towel. Allow to proof briefly, 5-10 minutes, before baking for about fifteen at 400 F. Remove them when they are golden brown and lightly crisp. Slide to cooling racks and allow to cool slightly before serving because the butter makes them very hot.

You can also freeze the dough in an airtight container. Feel free to lengthen refrigeration times for more "authentic" croissants. I plan on making up some fruit fillings, but chocolate is a great fall back anytime. I'll take pictures of the next batch, I promise.