Croissant Crumb Issues
I am trying to slowly understand what are the issues with my croissants and slowly improving on them.
I had a lot of issues with gluten development before and very low rise at the proofing stage. This has since improved and I have made my best batch yet.. but I still feel that the crumb is not quite there yet.
while the end product is certainly flaky, it still has a bit of denseness on the inside.. like a soft bread roll.
I am not sure if this is because it’s under proofed, lacked gluten development, bad lamination through collapsed layer due to shattered butter or uneven spread? One thing I think I’m sure of is the butter not absorbing into the dough, maybe.
Any thoughts? And more generally, what signs can I look for in order to make adjustments?
Hi mate,
I'm sorry that your first reply (to your first post!) is not a very helpful or constructive one but I can tell you with perfect honesty that, for all the instagram-worthy croissant crumb shots on this site, none have made me want to take a bite so intensely that I can actually imagine the sensation and satisfaction.
Except this one.
It is without a hint of exaggeration that I say that my inability sink my teeth into that particular piece of pastry is causing me no small measure of disappointment - to the extent that I now feel that there is a gap in my life the exact size, shape, colour, texture, and (no doubt) taste of the viennoiserie between your fingers.
From the looks of the crumb in the picture, I would guess that you needed to proof the croissant longer. You have the spiral structure and it looks like you have fairly good layers and bubble distribution, so I would assume your lamination was fine. Did the croissants feel heavy for their size? When a croissant is well proofed and baked it should feel light for its size.
Happy baking!
It had puffed up and could see slight layer separation during proofing, so I assumed they were done as I didn’t want to overproof.
But they definitely didn’t feel that light post baking and obviously the inside isn’t as airy/light texture to taste.
Are there other factors that could affect the rise aside from the yeast? It doesn’t seem to have any significant oven spring during bake either, they kind of remained more or less similar size from proof stage
I think the dough is too tight so it can not expand vertically because of that the proofing and oven spring can not have a bigger volume because tight dough will act like a spring pulling it back to orginal size of proofing in the oven .
I think the problem is the hydration and the gluten strength , the dough have to be light on gluten structure ( the window pan have to be half strong ) and should have a better gluten window after the bulk fermentation
Hydration being a problem, as in too high or too low?
So I kinda have this same problem but jus that I didnt have such beautiful pronounced layers in mine. I suspect I might have gone a bit heavy handed in rollin the dough? The layers were stuck together. And yes I froze them the night before I baked them today after 2 hours of proof.
Potential problems might be lamination and/or underproofing? there were small puddles of butter during baking.
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