March 6, 2018 - 10:32pm
How Do I See If My Croissant Honeycomb Crumb is Good Enough?
Hello there,
I am currently trying to make good croissants and I have done a search here and read all the "croissant posts" in this forum. I am wondering when it comes to the honeycomb crumb of the croissants, what is considered good enough? How can I tell? Could anyone please share their knowledge?
Thank you and have a wonderful day :)
Cheers,
ketupat007
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kendalm is one of our experts on croissants, hopefully he will see this and give you some pointers.
Thank you leslieruf for your reply. I too hope some experts here with guide me and teach me.
Have a wonderful day :)
and leslie is being nice as i am more of a blurter ie I just post a lot of material (mostly to convey experiences for others to use as reference material) but to answer your question I would simply say that you are your best judge but coming from another perspective these are amaaazing croissants - they have sprung up beautifully and any bigger is just for bragging rights - personally I dont think a croissant needs to be any more inflated than what you have posted here - there are some photos floating around he net of super crumb croissants (take the baltic bakery for instance). At the end of the day, if the bake hits the mark you were aiming for then you succeeded.
you are right though ingredients especially butter are most important. I think the key is to try a few European butters and just hide in on what works best for you. I personally like president butter it's just right in terms of malleability - kerrygold is great but poses challenges as it is probably the softest out there and melts rather quickly and you may have to employ the freezer more agressibly. Then there's the euro knock-offs like plugras and a few others that are great in terms of fat but tend to be really hard and again you then need the freezer to harden your dough. I can generally turn out a sheet with one intermediate chill using president butter whereas the other brands require at least two intermediate chills.
back to the point - if you are completely obsessed with getting more of a honeycomb then go for it but really why ? These are fantastic !
Thank you kendalm for your reply. I am a novice when it comes to these babies. When I went to France, I was mesmerized with their bake goods. OMG..I didn't want to leave France...hahaha!
When I started baking this, my first bake was "bread-like" texture croissants. I knew it wasn't it. Did some research and I read about honeycomb texture and I was wondering how can I tell if I hit the right honeycomb texture. I even read about the "T" or the "cross" structure in the honeycomb which I do not understand.
If experience bakers comment that its good enough, then I am very happy. I just needed to be sure that I am going on the right track.
Maybe, now that I got the hang of it, I can create chocolate croissants, almond croissants and other les viennoiserie products.
Thank you :)
I used to compete in a lot of international sports comps and it was France that hooked me on baking too - I can still remember the first time I bit into real French bread - Antibes December '87 - and then stuffing my bags with loaves for the trip home. Yeah ! I get it. Actually its a great motivator to make you want to hit the marks that you were lucky enough to experience - actually one thought I had was in your rolling maybe you wanna to try getting 7 steps - it's not really that important but k think it's good for consistency to try to get 7 instead of 5 steps (also a point txfarmer makes and she's sort of the croissant queen on tfl)
Thank you kendalm for your reply! Am reading your blog about croissants..you are one amazing baker! Didn't realized that how we roll it ( 5 or 7 steps) make such a huge difference. I watched the video which was on your blog http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/54857/sourdough-croissants-inspired-txfarmer, OMG, Louis Lamour's croissants are amazing! Going to look for txfarmer's croissant blog and start reading and learning more.
Thank you for guiding me as I am learning so much more.
Have a wonderful weekend :)
From a non-expert, it looks better than good enough, it looks fantastic! Well done!
Thank you Danni3ll3! :)
From what I have learned so far from making crossiants is that the only thing you really want to focus on is good quality butter and ingredients for the taste and the airy inside. By what I see is that I can’t get any better than that. Expertly done! I haven’t gotten that far yet. Pro bakery’s have commercial products and utensils to make them the same shape, size and color.
Thank you Thenameisjeff! :) I am also so amazed with all the bake goods in those bakeries...omg! its always mind blowing, you know :)
I really think you hit the mark possible for a home-baker and so early also (I imagine you have done have only done it a couple of times) I also really like to do my research before I get into something so challenging and new as laminated dough and I’m still learning.
The bakeries that are popular by there pastries also have many years of experience, but as I have said the ones you made are outstanding.
Thank you Thenameisjeff for your post and for your understanding in my need to "research" on things. :) I just wanted to make sure that I am on the right track. Most of my friends have been to fantastic bakeries in Europe and other countries. I would not want to embarrass myself if I made a batch of croissants and its not even half way there. Now, I can try to make other types of croissants (eg: almond, chocolate, etc)
Thank you :)
You really need to try and to make pain as chocolat.
I have some questions actually.
Have you freezes the rolled up croissants and then let them proof overnight before?
How long did you proof them for?
what flour type did you use?
Could I maybe have the recipe? :)
Thank you for your post Thenameisjeff. :) Yes, I am going to try to make pain au chocolat soon..hopefully I will succeed.
As for your questions:
I have not tried to freeze any rolled up croissants and let them prove overnight. I was actually thinking about that so that I can be lazy and just freeze a bunch of it and when my family wants to have some croissants, I can just let the frozen croissants prove overnight covered on my countertop.
I proved my last croissants for nearly 2 1/2 hours.
As for the flour, the first time I followed Yuval Ayalon's recipe and did the croissants while watching his video. When I failed, I did more research and changed the flour by using 80% bread flour and 20% AP flour. The honeycomb texture started to show but it wasn't still good croissants though. So, on my 3rd attempt, I changed the ratio of the flour to 50% bread flour & 50% AP flour. And finally on my 4th attempt, and using Bruno Albouze's croissants recipe
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OAUM0MRgQw but still maintain my flour ratio to 50% - 50%, I managed to get some nice croissants.
If you want to see some photos, I started a blog as I am a forgetful person and I thought that a blog help me..you know :) http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/55489/my-journey-great-croissants
Hope this helps :)
Have a wonderful weekend :)
Okay, so i also use brunos recipe. But what I was trying differently was to use “pastry flour”. I did some research and found some bakers and recipes using pastry flour for laminated dough, but after using it 3 times I also think bread flour has to be used together that oven spring. I did freeze the crossaints like Bruno did in one of his videos, let them sit in the turned off oven on a baking sheet with a taller baking sheets on top as a lid. I sprayed the inside of the sheets with water to have some humidity. 8 hours later they had the wobble to them, but I would think one more hour would be better. No dry spots and the layers where separated as they proofed. The taste and feel was great because of the long fermentation, but again they didn’t really puff up as much as I wanted. I will go for the 50-50 ratio you mentioned, but I think I will add some diastic malt powder since it help the yeast feed on the starches and the texture. It just malted barley with its enzymes activated if you don’t know;)
Thanks for posting Thenameisjeff :) We do not have pastry flour here unless we special order it and that would be really expensive. Good luck with the 50-50 ratio and adding the diastic malt powder. Do show us a photo of your croissants, please. As for myself, am going to try to make chocolate croissants and going to try to roll the croissants to 7 steps. Once the weather is better, I will try another batch. :)
Happy baking!
Every bread flour diffrent, and for me every time a recipe calls for "bread flour", I use a Manitoba flour. Since (where I live) we have no flour that's says bread in the title I use Manitoba because I read the protein content and try to get above 12-12,5. Could i see what the nutrient facts are on your bread and AP flour? :)
Thank you so much for the help on making the perfect croissants !
I tried freezing the rolled croissants and did the Bruno Albouze's over-night method of proving at the countertop. I proved it around 10 hours. I could see the layers and it wobbled. However, when I place it into the oven, the croissants did not have much oven spring and did not puffed up nicely. I guess the freezing of croissants for later bakes will not be happening in this house till I figure out what I should do and do it better.
frozencroissants.jpg
As for the AP Flour, the nutrition facts is as such:
Total Fat 0g
Sodium 0mg
Carbohydrates 22g
Net carbs 21.5g
Fiber 0.5g
Protein 3g
Hmmm, may be I should just make the croissants fresh and bake it immediately.
Have a wonderful day :)