I have a bit of a “Baking Bucket List”. Things that I know I won’t make all the time, but I’d like to say I’ve made once. Croissants are on that list. And now I can tick them off! About a month ago, I teamed up with Terri from Our Good Life and together we created the #MakeItHappenBlogHop. Every month, us and a group of other bloggers will be challenging ourselves to do something we have always wanted to do and Make It Happen! The first month’s topic is food. It was the perfect opportunity for me to try out some French Patisserie.
I went into this process knowing it wasn’t easy, but I was pleasantly surprised. It is time consuming (3 days worth) but not as tricky as I first thought. I followed the recipe and method from Laura in the Kitchen and I have to say it was fabulous. Her video is SO clear and I highly recommend it if it’s your first time making croissants. Plus she’s just the loveliest person so go subscribe if you haven’t already!
Without further ado… let’s make croissants.
Day 1
Day 1 is pretty simple, the ingredients for the dough are mixed together and the dough is kneaded for 5 minutes like a normal bread dough. The dough is enriched with milk and it’s luxuriously soft and smooth. After that, it’s placed in the fridge overnight to rise slowly. It’s not a dramatic rise, but it’s enough. Now, get a good night’s sleep in preparation for day 2!
Day 2
Are you ready for today? It’s going to be a long one. There’s a lot of rolling and folding, waiting and repeating. First things first is to add the butter layer. This can seem like A LOT, but the butter layer is what gives croissants their signature layers. Once it is folded into the dough like an envelope, the dough is rolled into a very long rectangle and folded over 3 times. After the folding it should be put into the fridge for an hour. This process is repeated 4 times. After the 4th time, the dough is placed into the fridge overnight again. It will look something like this by the end of the day and have a total of 81 layers!
Day 3
On the morning of day 3, you’ll be greeted with dough that looks like this on the inside!
Look at all those layers!! All, beautiful 81 of them. Now this is where it gets exciting. After one final roll, the dough can be cut into triangles and rolled into croissants. When you are rolling them, you start at the wide end of the triangle and roll it down to the point, one minute it’s a triangle, the next it’s a perfectly formed croissant ready for the oven!
Just a short while in the oven and there you have it, perfect French Croissants. I will probably stick to buying them from the patisserie from now on, but I’m so glad I did it once!
Let me know something that you would LOVE to try in the kitchen that has maybe seemed a big challenge to you?
This post is part of the “Make It Happen” blog series. Every month, myself and some other bloggers challenge ourselves to try something we have never done before and Make It Happen! We are excited to be on this journey together so please check out their posts below!
