March 8, 2018 - 4:33am
Pain au chocolat size?
I have a recipe for viennoiseries where you work with one half at a time to make either croissants or pain au chocolat. The croissant mesurments are no problem, but the recipe calls to cut out 15 rectangles from about 13X13 inch square of laminated dough. I think that’s a little too small and that it wouldn’t really look that as large as you normally see them in other recipes or bakery’s. How long and wide should I roll the dough out to, how many should I get out of I and what would baking be?
the recipe for one half is about:
250 g flour
125 ml water
15 g fresh yeast
25 g sugar
50 g butter
6 g salt
folding:
125 g butter
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The recipe calls for 169 square inches to be cut into 15 rectangles. That makes 11.2 square inches each. If you cut rectangles of 2.5 x 4.5 inches each that would make 15 nicely sized pain aux chocolate neither too big or small. If you are expecting larger, sizes beyond 2-3 inches in width are really oversized from the traditional and gotta remember that many places like to dazzle you with enormity and often times this is a substitute for lack of real quality as if 'Well heck, let's just make gargantuan pastries and they'll forget about the crappy lamination' - I was just marvelling the other day at Starbucks versions of pain aux chocolate which were at least 4 inches wide (meaning the slab for each must have been about 8-9 inches long) - now that's a large one but 2.5 inches wide is a perfect little morsel of goodness - verdict - the recipe and dimensions look spot on !
With size reference as you can see him rolling them up about 5:50 into the video - https://m.youtube.com/watch?t=34s&v=409birlmP1s
With size reference as you can see him rolling them up about 5:50 into the video - https://m.youtube.com/watch?t=34s&v=409birlmP1s
was made to encourage bakeries to make their own dough from scratch rather than buying the croissants frozen and then baking them. So even in France, people are taking shortcuts!
A point to ponder, in many parts of Europe, the standard size of a chocolate baton/stick used in pain a choco is 8cm. You don't want your dough to be much longer and definitely not shorter than that. So, the recipe may be written with that consideration in mind..Ultimately, you can make whatever size your heart desires ?
I have found the measurements for the size that I want, but thank you for letting me know about the baton size. I have tried finding something similar, but it’s almost impossible since I need to buy them from a professional bulk store and that the once in the normal grocery stores has different flavors inside them.