Croissant report
I made the croissants from scratch like I planned for Thanksgiving this year, and it was a very worthwhile experiment!
We used Paul Hollywood's recipe, the judge from the Great British Bake Off. Bernie and I made the dough two nights ago, and it turned out to be not particularly difficult but a fairly labor-intensive process. More than anything, it took a long time. I made the initial dough out of water, flour, salt, sugar, and yeast. It was supposed to be kneaded with the dough hook of a stand mixer, but I don't have one, so I had to do it by hand. I was concerned that I might not work it enough, but I think I ended up overcompensating and kneaded it too long.
Then we rolled out a sheet of butter and folded it into the dough. Doing that folding over process several is what gives laminated pastries like croissants their characteristic layers-- the water in the butter turns to steam and that air puffs the layers apart. The only difficult part it that between each "turn" the dough has to go back into the fridge to chill for an hour, so it takes forever. Also, making it so far in advance, the dough had a lot more rising time than it was supposed to. It made me nervous, as I kept hearing Paul Hollywood's coarse country accent in my head, saying, "They're over-proved, they're overworked."
We baked them in a 400 degree oven for fifteen minutes. They came out golden, but we found the ones on the lower oven rack blackened on the bottom, while the ones on top stayed nice. They were finished just as the turkey was about done resting, so we put them on the table to eat with the rest of the meal.
They were actually delicious, even the ones that were burnt on the bottom. On the inside, they had layers and you could see the puff, but I'm fairly certain the texture was wrong. When we were rolling it out for the last time to make into croissant shapes, we noticed the dough was very elastic, which indicated the presence of gluten. This pastry isn't supposed to be too glutenous, so that confirmed I kneaded it too much. Also, when you bit into them or tried to break them, they were ever so slightly tougher than they should have been, not quite as light and crisp. But the flavor was definitely there, and they did get the layers. Not bad for my first try of a fairly challenging pastry recipe!
We used Paul Hollywood's recipe, the judge from the Great British Bake Off. Bernie and I made the dough two nights ago, and it turned out to be not particularly difficult but a fairly labor-intensive process. More than anything, it took a long time. I made the initial dough out of water, flour, salt, sugar, and yeast. It was supposed to be kneaded with the dough hook of a stand mixer, but I don't have one, so I had to do it by hand. I was concerned that I might not work it enough, but I think I ended up overcompensating and kneaded it too long.
Then we rolled out a sheet of butter and folded it into the dough. Doing that folding over process several is what gives laminated pastries like croissants their characteristic layers-- the water in the butter turns to steam and that air puffs the layers apart. The only difficult part it that between each "turn" the dough has to go back into the fridge to chill for an hour, so it takes forever. Also, making it so far in advance, the dough had a lot more rising time than it was supposed to. It made me nervous, as I kept hearing Paul Hollywood's coarse country accent in my head, saying, "They're over-proved, they're overworked."
We baked them in a 400 degree oven for fifteen minutes. They came out golden, but we found the ones on the lower oven rack blackened on the bottom, while the ones on top stayed nice. They were finished just as the turkey was about done resting, so we put them on the table to eat with the rest of the meal.
They were actually delicious, even the ones that were burnt on the bottom. On the inside, they had layers and you could see the puff, but I'm fairly certain the texture was wrong. When we were rolling it out for the last time to make into croissant shapes, we noticed the dough was very elastic, which indicated the presence of gluten. This pastry isn't supposed to be too glutenous, so that confirmed I kneaded it too much. Also, when you bit into them or tried to break them, they were ever so slightly tougher than they should have been, not quite as light and crisp. But the flavor was definitely there, and they did get the layers. Not bad for my first try of a fairly challenging pastry recipe!