Croissant

I just looooove croissant. Every visit to Starbucks is when I have it, because at the stores they sell it in large numbers and I would not want to unnecessary swallow up extra calories at one go. Yes, I can eat all of them at one sitting. Oh my god, what am I, a zombie :) ?

I always wanted to make these at home and hence gave it a try finally. But with the guilt in me of having too much butter, I kind of cut short the amount, which resulted in not so fluffy croissant. However, the recipe includes the correct amount of butter that should ideally go into these and so if you follow it, you are definitely gonna get fluffy croissant.

Try it and I am sure you would love it, but just don't get addicted to it like me :P.

Ingredients


For the dough

 
1. 4 cups of all purpose flour
2. 1/2 cup + 2 tbsp of cold water
3. 1/2 cup + 2 tbsp of cold milk
4. 1/4 cup + 2 tbsp of sugar
5. 3 tbsp of unsalted softened butter  
6. 1 1/4 tbsp of instant yeast
7. 2 1/4 tsp of salt

For the lamination butter layer

1. 250 gms / 1 1/4 cups of cold unsalted butter

For the egg wash

1. 1 large egg, beaten

Method


Making of the dough

1. In a bowl, take all the dry ingredients (flour, sugar, yeast and salt) listed for the dough and give it a mix. Now add the softened butter and with both your hands spread it so that they mix well and give you a flour with crumbs, as the butter gets coated with the flour.
2. Now add in the wet ingredients (milk and water) and mix it untill you form a dough. Now cover the dough in a plastic wrap and let it rest at room temperature for about half an hour. Then place it in the refrigerator overnight. Croissant dough is ready.

Making of the lamination butter layer

• Slice the butter in equal thickness and arrange/align them into a square on top of a parchment sheet. Place another parchment sheet on top of it. Now with a rolling pin beat it slightly to form an even surface of the butter square. Refrigerate it for about half an hour or untill the butter is set.
• Take out the dough and butter from the refrigerator. Roll out the dough in a way that the butter slab can be placed on top of the rolled out dough and covered in it. Now we would need to roll and fold the dough multiple times which would result in the lamination.
• Roll out the dough into a rectangular shape so that it is 3 times long as it is wide. Fold the dough over into equal thirds. Now flatten it a little and cover it and refrigerate it for half an hour.
• Take out the dough and roll it in the direction of the open ends. Repeat the folding three more times and placing back the dough in the refrigerator after making the folds everytime. Flour your surface slightly when rolling out the dough so that they do not stick to the surface.
• Take out the dough and roll it out into a long strip. Trim down the edges to form even edges. Now cut them into triangles. 
• Make a small cut/notch at the base of each triangle and roll it over to its point ends to shape them into croissants and line it on to a prepared baking tray. 
• Once all the croissants have been formed, give them an egg wash and let them rest in a warm place for proving for about 1- 2 hrs. 
• Preheat the oven to 425 F.
• Once they have risen, give them a second egg wash and bake it in the oven for about 15- 20 minutes or untill the crust turns golden brown.
• Remove it from the oven, let it cool a little before you serve them. I am sure the explanation would sound all greek and latin here, so why don't you check out this video to get a better idea of laminating the croissants.

Tips

1. Maintaining the butter from melting down is the key to forming croissants. So it is very important that you keep refrigerating it multiple times while working with it.
2. Flour the surface while laminating, just enough that they don't stick to the surface. However, do not overload the surface with flour that dry patches of flour get stick to the dough.
3. Butter is the key ingredients to having a flaky croissant. Do not cut down its amount when making croissants.

Recipe courtesy :  Adapted from Finecooking.com