croissants

I see I'm not the only one who was on a quest for the perfect croissant...I'm on the quest for the perfect pain au chocolat i just want the dough to be right. I want my croissant and pain au chocolat to taste like the one from Galaxy Desserts/Williams-Sonoma. I came relatively close and this is the results I have thus far. These tasted great but I have no idea where to get fresh yeast from so I used active dry rapid yeast and I think the fresh yeast is what I'm mixing for them to be absolutely perfect. I love the way the layers looks. I was truly amazed when I popped these out of the oven.

I know I've been slacking on the posting lately, so here's my pictures post of some recent breads I've done.

Dmsnyder's SF sourdough take IV (http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/27892/my-san-francisco-sourdough-quest-take-4)

Changes: replaced all flour for Central Milling's type 70 high extraction flour.  Bulk ferment pre-shape instead of post-shape.  Baked in a dutch oven.
This one turned out quite sour, not quite boudin-sour, but still very nice.

Monkey Bread:

Using my house sweet dough, balls of dough are dipped in butter then rolled into chopped walnuts and raw sugar.
Baked into a bunt pan covered in butter and sprinkled with sliced almonds.

xfarmer's sourdough Croissants: (http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/23342/croissant-sourdough-starter-txfarmer-vs-tx-summer)

They came out a bit toasty, my oven runs a tad hot.  Made a few into breakfast sanwiches.  Sharp cheddar with egg and ham, served with some nice coffee (dab of cream)

Tried a batch of croissants a la Bertinet "Crust" formula, with one change - replaced 1/3 of the white flour with stone-ground whole wheat to make them a weeeee bit more healthy.

Found the dough just a bit harder to roll out, but I was quite pleased with the results

Maybe it's the cooler weather, but this is also the first batch I've made where there was ZERO butter leakage from the croissants during baking.

Not any noticeable change in the flakiness, and they taste good, so I'm going to count this one as a success.

Gotta work on keeping more of the chocolat in the pain, though - any ideas on that one very much welcome.

There was a bit of frost on the grass here in Pretoria overnight and the temperature inside the house at 6:30 this morning was a bracing 55ºF.  By 3:30 this afternoon, the indoor temperature had rocketed all the way up to 57ºF!  Another day or two of this and the granite counter tops in the kitchen should be chilled enough to handle laminated doughs with no risk of butter breakouts.  That, of course, assumes that the butter block is soft enough to be malleable.  I may have to set it out in the sun for a few minutes...

Paul

That is ,If My first attempt did yield anything close to a croissant. I Was inspired by Akiko's Post here about her great croissants adapted from Steve's Great website: Breadcetera, and i had to try my luck at croissants.

 This time, i have managed to retain the butter in the layers in the oven, and not ending up with a puddle of molten butter. The Dough lamination went on smoothly, But I had to let the dough chill in the freezer for 25 minutes per session instead of the fridge, due to my warm kitchen.

Chilling my dough in the freezer lead to a prolonged final proof (3 hours), which were not enough. I was too scared to allow the dough ferment in my warmer kitchen, as the butter may melt.

Finally, i actually had Croissants, with Butter in them, and a lovely flaky texture, though not as airy as Akiko Croissants, But Considerably light.