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My first croissants

joc1954's picture
joc1954

My first croissants

 

Inspired by recent ricman post about first try making croissants I decided to try my luck. Actually I have never made before a laminated dough as all recipes that I have checked looked very complicated and required a lot of time. 

 

Croissants while being baked.

 

As a guide for my experiment I used this video by Yuval Ayalon which is about 30 minutes long with a lot of background information. Yuval promises that the overall time of making croissants is about 3.5 hours. I strictly followed his recipe and after about 4 hours I was able to try great croissants. Actually I have never eaten so good croissants so far with the exception of croissants I had eaten at Poilaine bakery in Paris which were far the best ones. I must say that my croissants were very close to those in Paris.

The final result

The only flaw I had was that maybe my oven was slightly too warm when I used it for final proofing. I used a bowl of warm water to warm up and moisten the air but maybe I came to close to melting temperature of butter. Yuval warns in his video about this potential danger, but I was so excited that I was hurrying with the final proof. That was probably the reason that the croissants slightly collapsed after being baked. 

The crumb shot - unfortunately the knife was not sharp enough to make a clean cut. The structure of the crumb was amazing.

The recipe is simple and easy to follow and the outcome was simply amazing. The croissants were heavenly good and just melted in the mouth.

Happy baking,

Joze

 

Comments

nmygarden's picture
nmygarden

Joze, your croissants look positively wonderful! And, no doubt, they were popular with all! Congrats, and be sure to make more.

Cathy

joc1954's picture
joc1954

For a long time I was convinced that the croissants are too difficult to make so this was a "good" excuse. I don't know how they will turn out next time but surely they are "doable" with a little bit of patience.

My wife was so encouraged while she was watching me and especially after tasting them that she decided that next time she will make them.

Happy baking Cathy!

Joze

IceDemeter's picture
IceDemeter

Kudos on such an incredible result.  This would be a rousing success from someone with years of experience with laminated dough, and is beyond grand for a first attempt.  I love that you were so excited that you tried to rush the proof (that is sooo something that I would do)!  I'm glad that it didn't do much damage to the end result - the crumb structure is truly lovely.

Thanks so much for linking the video, and for sharing your bake.  I bet you've got some family members who would have a grand time doing the next batch with you, and I am looking forward to seeing your posts on that!

joc1954's picture
joc1954

My wife already said she will make next batch so I have already purchased some butter. Currently she has some problems with her back so she is not in a good shape for making laminated dough. But I expect that in a day or two she will be ready to do that. I will definitely post about that.

I  always admired people making the pastry which was in my perception much more complicated than making bread. But baking bread gave me quite a lot of experience to become familiar with the dough and learned a lot of background details which in turn helped me to make the croissants in an easy way. I am sure that every time you bake something you learn something either because of success or failure, Failures are even more educational because it is the "hard" way of learning so you always try to avoid them next time.

Happy baking!

Joze 

Stuart Borken's picture
Stuart Borken

You are a genius in the kitchen.  These are examples of perfection.  You successfully made one of the most difficult of all baked items.  Next you must make kouign-amann.  I have no doubt you can be successful with this challenge as well.

joc1954's picture
joc1954

Definitely I will try to do kouign-amann soon. I found a good recipe and video how to make it. I already got idea how to twist the recipe to make a salty starter dish. However, that comes next, first I will just follow the recipe.

I am far away of being a genius but really have a great enthusiasm for baking. Very rarely I make pastry and sweets as I had some big failures many years ago. But after now baking bread for several years I decided to give another try and the first attempt was very successful. My wife and I are trying not to eat so much sweet stuff but it looks like my neighbors are good candidates for eating my pastry products.

Happy baking Stuart,

Joze

Stuart Borken's picture
Stuart Borken

A Great Video.. Submitted by bread1965 on October 22, 2016 - 8:07am. 

There's something so relaxing about watching this video.. I found it in my mailbox this morning.. it's from some mailing list I must have signed up for at some point.. I don't think I'd every make this, but I loved watching it.. enjoy.. It is a video of how to make the kouign-amann.  I used to watch it and try to get inspired.  It would not play all the way thru for me today, July 26, 2017, I don't know why.  I hope it plays thru for you.  stu b

https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/kouign-amann--2?utm_source=ChefSteps&utm_campaign=15f484c21e-friday_newsletter_oct_20_2016&utm_medium=email&utm_t...

Danni3ll3's picture
Danni3ll3

I am amazed at those croissants!!! They look fantastic! Well done!

joc1954's picture
joc1954

I must admit that I didn't expect so good result. Recently I was on vacations and there we had several times croissants. The first time we were lucky and they were just baked and therefore quite good, but next time we got some which were baked several hours before and quite dry - so a big disappointment. At that time I promised my wife to make croissants when we will be back at home.

Here in Slovenia is a baker who bakes perfect sourdough bread and promised to offer also sourdough croissants. Unfortunately he is a perfectionist and so far he is not satisfied with the results and we are still waiting that the croissants will be listed among the products. I will definitely try to make sourdough croissants as well but first I have to use this recipe several times to get consistent results. My last try to make sourdough pizza was a great success so I don't see any obstacles why not to give a try to croissants with my starter.

Happy baking Danni!

Joze

    

ketupat007's picture
ketupat007

I too wanted to bake some croissants and after reading your post, I too used Yuval Ayalon's recipe and method.  I failed though as my croissants turned out to be more bread-like instead of honeycomb.  I followed his video to the T and still made mistake.

Do you have any idea what might cause it to turn into bread-like?

However, the bread-like croissants were still delicious when we ate it with jam...:)

Thank you  and happy baking :)

ketupat

Bakingbug's picture
Bakingbug

As it happens, I came across Yuval's video recently and put it to the test. I already make croissants but have found the process a bit hit and miss, even though I can make laminated dough for danish etc without a problem.What made the difference for me were several things, only having a short time for the dough to sit before laminating and that the lamination required no fridge time in-between folds, were major factors. (I am an early riser and can make them fresh for morning coffee time!) The other bit I found really great was the putting warm water in the oven for proofing. Where I live, the kitchen temp can be anything from 12c to 30c!  So many videos are made in professional kitchens..

What I did note though was that for MY oven, using the fan setting was a no no.  I ended up with hot spots (and you don't want to turn these!) After more experimentation, I found that a straight forward temp of 215c non fan for 17 minutes did the trick. I've made them several times and they are perfection. I have had many bakery croissants in France and these are the best!

 

dabrownman's picture
dabrownman

then you need to try harder or get new grand kids:-)  Seriously these are great looking and fast!  With no fridge time?  You aren't making these in AZ except in the dead of winter on a cloudy day when it is only 65 F:-)  For a first shot these are wonderful. 

Well done and happy baking Joc

Boris's picture
Boris

Hi Joze,

I just finished a batch of croissants following Yuval's recipe. They were not perfect..they came out flat, didn't rise enough during baking. Also, a lot of butter came out of them during baking. I think that the proofing was not done right as they haven't doubled in size before baking. This made me suspitious about not doing the first proof.

Any tips?

Thanks.