Croissant help!
I have making croissants for the better part of 5 years and I've come across my fair share of hurdles (they can be temperamental little beasts), but my latest one seems to have me stumped.
When I proof the shaped plain croissants, they start to form tears on the surface which are both unattractive and seem to hinder the volume of the final product. The dough laminates fine and shapes fine (although they often seem a bit tight when I stretch them. There's little indication that they won't turn out until the next morning when they're proofing and they just basically start to disintegrate. The chocolate and ham & cheese croissants don't usually have problem (since they're "log" shaped), although sometimes they split a little at the base.
I'm a whiz laminator and a decent shaper so I'm not entirely sure where the problem lies. My only guess is the dough. We've gotten some tearing on occasion, especially in the summer time when they tend to proof quicker than they should with the heat and humidity around here, but it seems to have escalated when we switched from making the dough in a Hobart stand mixer to an Esmach spiral mixer (we make about 30k at a time). Most of us in the bakery have little to no experience with a spiral mixer and I'm dismayed to find little literature on how it interacts with enriched dough. At first, I thought the dough was getting overworked and the protein structure was breaking. I was always taught to mix croissant dough only until it's just smooth, that the lamination process would add the necessary gluten, but now I'm not so sure. Things I've read indicate that the spiral mixer is designed to gently mix the dough without forming gluten. So I'm somewhere in between thinking they're overmixed and undermixed.
If anyone with experience mixing croissant dough (or challah and brioche for that matter) in a spiral mixer could chime in I would appreciate it. Or, anyone who has a bit of advice. Thank you!
My first hunch is to say it was overmixed, and the extra gluten is the cause of the tearing and tightness - except I would expect that from going the other direction, from spiral to a planetary mixer, not the other way around.
What speed are you running the spiral mixer at, and how long? Spiral mixers are (in my admittedly limited experience) a lot less violent than a Hobart with a dough hook, but no less thorough, so running for a few minutes at first speed is all you need. Maybe an short autolyse period during the mix, to let the dough relax?
Maybe it's dough temperature? The spiral mixer may not be adding as much friction heat to the dough as the Hobart, so maybe it's not as warmed up?
I am making these guesses based on the idea that it's tearing from excess gluten production and rise pressure. If it's the other way around, and these are falling apart because there's not enough structure to deal with the expansion of layers... then it's a question of running the spiral mixer at second speed, and/or a bit longer.
I'm several months late to this discussion, but I came here to make my first post, specifically looking for answers to this issue of "disintegrating croissants." I am a pastry chef and instructor of recreational classes. Croissant, and laminated doughs in general, are my favorite thing to make and teach. I had the same experience as you! And it was in a class, which was mortifying to me and disappointing to my students. I have been wracking my brain to figure out what happened. I have come to the conclusion that it had to be an ingredient issue - either the milk (sour?), butter (rancid/acidic?) flour (?) or bad yeast. Or some terrible perfect storm of 2 or 3 ingredients.
I used the same ingredients (from the same containers) over 3 different batches, 2 days in a row. All other conditions were the same as always (I teach the class 2-3x/mo) except that my kitchen was significantly colder than usual, at about 60 degrees F. I was thrilled when I walked into a cold kitchen, as I thought the conditions would be perfect for laminating. My technique was also the same as always: 2 minute mix, one hour cold rest, French lock-in, letter fold, book fold, letter fold, with one hour cold rests between each turn. Overnight cold rest. Roll, shape, proof. Oven temp same as always, oven calibrated and checked with thermometer. I proof at 77-80 degrees in a humid environment (I don't have a hygrometer, so I don't know the RH, but I always use the same proofing setup, so I don't think it was the proofing.) Made 2 batches on Monday, shaped/proofed/baked Tuesday and the 3rd on Tuesday, shaped/proofed/baked Wednesday. All three patons, mixed and constructed separately, yielded the disintegrating croissants.
The dough was much tighter than usual, as you also experienced, even at the detrempe stage (after a one-hour rest), when it is usually supple and pliable. It also had an off scent, but I chalked that up to the cold and my nose being off. My back and shoulders were a mess the next day because of how much rolling I had to do (no sheeter in this kitchen) and my doughs still never reached my preferred dimensions on each turn. Take a look at my photos - is this what you experienced? There is another user here that posted pics that look JUST LIKE THESE. But that discussion was even older, so I though I would start here.
I thought since conditions were so cold and dough so tight that I created micro-tears in the dough, or broken gluten strands doing all that hard rolling, that were then amplified with each turn as they propagated throughout the dough. But it was three different doughs - seems unlikely that would happen to all three. And one of the doughs, I took home to roll, shape, proof and bake. So it's not location- or temperature-related. None of this explains why the detrempe was so tight to begin with, before I even started the laminations. I always rest the detrempe in a cold fridge, so it wouldn't be temp-related even if my kitchen was colder than normal. The butter was cold/pliable and looked to have sheeted nicely in the dough - no broken up bits. Dough and croissants also smelled strange/awful after overnight rest and during/after baking - sour, but not in a good, cultured-butter sort of way! (This also leads me to believe it was an ingredient issue, as why would a technique issue lead to a strange odor?)
Does anyone have any additional thoughts on why this may have happened? My chef is encouraging me to chalk it up, and let it go...but I can't. I HAVE to know so I can avoid in future. Confidence is shaken! Maybe I got too cocky :)
disintegrating croissants.jpg
disintegrating croissants oven.jpg
disintegrating croissants final.jpg
Hey, any help on this issue? I've had the same happen to me twice in 2 years and it's down to the flour. Mine had lumps, probably from absorbing humidity in transport. We sifted it, and in the end ended up asking for a whole new delivery of a different batch because it just was not giving us good results.
I've tried adding extra water to the dough to make it more extensible but I always get very mixed results still.
Bad lamination doesn't help (butter shattered) but in general if the dough is tight and snaps instead of being elastic, you will get that result or at best the "tails" of the croissants will not stay tucked underneath the base, they will open and tear.