I am a novice at making croissants, my one and only attempt at laminated dough many years ago wasn't a success. On that occasion I overheated the dough, thinking it would aid rising, which caused a lot of butter to leak out.
For me, there was two big failings in the recipe given in Larousse. The instructions on shaping the croissant are minimal at best, not including the advice about the "snip" on the large edge of the triangle before rolling it up, which helps achieve a neat crescent shape. Found out this information from Google-ing "how to shape croissants".
But what seems worse to me, is the guidance given on how to build the layers of butter in the dough. Here, it guides you to roll out the dough, place on 1/3 of the "softened butter", envelope fold into three and roll out again. (No guidance is given about keeping the dough/butter cold whilst working with it, in order to prevent butter leaking out). This process is repeated another two times. The issue is that no further rolling out is indicated after this stage, leaving the total butter "layers" at 6. Not the standard 32 usually required for good rising. Also, at this stage, the layers are very thick and prone to sliding during the cutting/shaping process.
Having completely followed the recipe and rolled a 45x15cm stretch of dough, I tried cutting two croissants. (The dough was also very thick at this point, impeding rolling up). Upon rolling up the triangles, the layers slid apart. This is when I gave up following the recipe, and instead performed another three butterless "roll and folds" on the croissant dough.
The additional turns and folds did improve the dough, and rolling it out thinner resulted in a better shaped croissant. However, there does seem to be a fair amount of skill required for shaping a croissant, which currently I do not possess. Also, getting them to become "golden brown" in the oven does seem to be a losing battle. I did not take a photo of this batch of croissants - I was not proud of the result. I really do not recommend using the recipe in Larousse for croissants, since there seems to be an issue (or maybe an omittance?) about the number of "fold and turns" required to laminate the dough.
Today, I tried making croissants again, using a different recipe. (The main differences being strong bread flour rather than plain, a milk/water mix than just milk, same amount of sugar and salt, same amount of butter). Butter still goes in over 3 stages, but 3 more "folds and turns" are included afterwards.
The result from this batch is still not "elegant". Baking 'til golden brown still eludes me; parts are pale, parts are brown, parts are black. And I have yet to master correct shaping technique. This time I kept the butter and dough really cold, which worked far better than the "softened" butter approach suggested by Larousse.
I admit that the Larousse dough was far easier to roll out (I assume this may be due to the use of plain flour), which makes me think it was not the dough which was the problem, so much as the instructions. (Having said that, I could not get the mixture to form a dough with the amount of milk given in the recipe. It seemed more like 275-325ml was required just to incorporate all the flour). However I will probably stick to plain flour in future, for convenience and ease of rolling out.
Alas, I cannot comment of the taste of either of these. Having previously had three liver transplants, one of the "standard" side-effects is the inability to tolerate high-fat foods. However I like cooking, whether I can actually eat the end result, or whether I can just look at it. It's the knowledge that I can make it which makes me happy.
Here's a photo of the second attempt at croissants. Clearly there's still much room for improvement.
No comments:
Post a Comment