The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

Halving Croissant Recipe

Zoe's picture
Zoe

Halving Croissant Recipe

Hi Bakers,

I'm a new member to TFL and have a great love of all things bread and baking. I'm not sure if I'm posting to the correct forum and I apologize if I'm in the incorrect spot. I was wondering if anyone out there can provide any info on how to halve a croissant recipe? I realize that the amounts of the ingredients can be halved easily but how are the dimensions of the detrempe, beurrage, and paton determined? 

If you're wondering why I want to halve a croissant recipe rather than just make the full amount and freeze half of the dough ... it's because I like to try different croissant recipes/techniques and so I don't want to waste all of the butter and flour on multiple batches. 

Additional info: the recipe that I'm looking to halve is the Tartine croissant recipe. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance to anyone reading this and willing to indulge me.

kendalm's picture
kendalm

Great question - lamination gets trickier with smaller quantities. As you probably already know a common staring point is 500g flour plus all the other ingredients ending up with just under a kilo dough ball of sweet smelling goodness. You'll then laminate in about 250g of butter. 

Assuming this is the quantity you see talking about splitting it will indeed be a slight challenge to laminate mostly because the folds will result in less area whereby layers actually sot on top of each other - the ends where the folds are will occupy more area. Assuming you are doing a typical double turn followed by a simple turn here's a way to easily remedy things

 

1. Perform the first double turn as normal and maybe go a little thinner before making the turns.

2. Absolutely refridgerate (unless you are super fast and working a really chill counter and pin).

3. When you are ready to do the simple turn and have rolled out the double, instead of folding, slice and stack the dough, the roll out the final sheet.

 

here's an example of what it looks like - note this is a variation of two double turns so we have an extra stack - http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/54781/lamination-question-croissanteurs

just imagine 3 stacks - this is the final point before rolling out the last sheet.

hope this helps !

 

 

 

 

Zoe's picture
Zoe

Thank you for the detailed information and link.  Your explanation makes a lot of sense and I'll be using your suggestions when I make my next batch of croissants. I've never halved a croissant recipe before and I know I should be thinking of it as an experiment but nevertheless ... if it doesn't work out it's always a let down. Albeit a buttery let down!

Thanks again for your help!

kendalm's picture
kendalm

is that if they don't turn out with great spring and crumb they almost always delicious anyway - the effort is almost always worth it :)

julie99nl's picture
julie99nl

One challenge you may face is with temperature control. The smaller your mass, the quicker it will warm up which goes for both the butter and the dough itself. For that reason alone, I don't like to work with less than 500 gr of flour.

kendalm's picture
kendalm

there's also an advantage and that is you can turn out 250g faster. I was considering getting one of those steel pins that you can chill but so far hasnt been that huge an issue (will see soon planning a heatwave batch any day)