Croissants

Croissants. Love them. My ideal start to a Saturday involves sitting outside in the sun, eating croissants, drinking hot chocolate and the reading papers. Our local bakeries’ croissants aren’t exactly cheap though, so in a slight recession-aware gesture I’m trying not to get them every week. Which lead me to think, “Right, must make some then.” I have made croissants before – in 1995, when I lived in the countryside in New Zealand. The imperative there was the fact that I couldn’t just pop out to buy some, but living in London I haven’t been motivated quite like that. Those 1995 attempts resulted in one perfect batch, then one failured batch, which made me wary of the processes required.

Anyway, so I made this batch on Sunday. I was hoping to have them for Sunday breakfast, but timing is an issue here. In principle, croissants aren’t that difficult, but in practise they’re tricky and time-consuming. I reached for my Leith’s Book of Baking, but the recipe given there by Prue Leith and Caroline Waldegrave is from The Roux Brothers on Patisserie. Although the Leith book clarifies a few points slight, the wording is pretty much the same, and the Roux brothers book has much more comprehensive illustration of the technique – 16 photos on a double page spread. Very handy, as it’s all about technique with croissants. Well, that and decent ingredients – but hey, we always advocate the use of decent ingredients here on cake-off, right?

I don’t think I can give the entire recipe here – I’d heartily recommend anyone interested in baking buys the Roux brothers patisserie book.

Croissant dough initially is a fairly standard white bread dough. I used fresh yeast, something I don’t usually use, but it seemed to work okay, perhaps surprisingly considering you don’t even use warm water to start it off. I rested that basic dough overnight in the fridge, then the next day set about adding the butter – a big blob incorporated into the dough, which is then rolled, folded and rested. (Roux says “chilled butter”, but I had my at room temperature, so it would roll it more smoothly. This was probably incorrect, but it made life easier, and seemed okay in the long run.) I rolled, folded and rested three more times, then cut the triangles, which you roll up for the croissant. I cocked up here as I was too lazy to make the triangular template, and my triangles were too small – resulting in small croissants. But, by and large, the results were very satisfactory – crisp, flaky, buttery-rich. Although I spent so long fiddling around with them I saw croissants when I closed my eyes and tried to sleep last night.

So – yes, in principle, I can make croissants, but I’m not sure it’s something I’ll get in the habit of doing. Domestically, it’s just not very practical to make them fresh in time for a 9am Saturday breakfast. As I’m not inclined to get up at 5am to start rolling, folding and resting!