Like many baked items in the yeast bread category, croissants are often intimidating.  Making croissants isn’t difficult and it can be done in stages, so this recipe is easy for people with busy lives.

When it comes to baking croissants, there are generally two types you can bake: “croissants de patissier” and “croissants de boulanger.”  In France, the “patisserie” is the pastry shop, in which the pastry chef makes them as pastry.  The “boulangerie” is the bakery in France, so the baker makes these croissants.   The patisserie makes more of a classic puff pastry, while the boulangerie will often use a puff dough called “laminated yeast dough.”

This recipe uses the laminated yeast dough that you would find in a typical French boulangerie.  This dough is incredibly light when baked.  It also has a little more body than classic puff pastry.   Though I’ve used this for croissants, you could easily use this recipe for Danish pastries, coffee cakes, turnovers, or anything that strickes your fancy.

This recipe is originally from King Arthur Flour (aren’t all the best recipes?), but I have modified it slightly to best suit my baking needs.

Ingredients:

For the dough:

• 2 large eggs plus enough warm water to make two cups liquid
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 5 1/2 to 6 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 1/4 teaspoons instant yeast
• 1/ 2 cup dry milk (technically optional, but I never make it without using it)
• 1 scant Tablespoon salt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 2 Tablespoons butter, melted

For the butter:

• 1 3/4 cups chilled butter – yes, this is almost a full pound
• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• Additional flour supply for dusting

First, we’re going to make the dough, and we’re going to start by making a sponge.  Crack the eggs in a 2-cup liquid measuring cup, and then add warm water until you hit the 2-cup line.  Using a fork, beat the mixture until it becomes a pretty, milky-eggy liquid.

Then pour this into the bowl of your mixer (or in a large mixing bowl), and add 1 Tablespoon of the sugar, three cupes of the flour, and the yeast.  Mix it until it is well blended, cover, and set aside.

In a separate mixing bowl, combine the rest of the flour (2.5 cups), the dry milk, and the salt.  Set that aside, too.

Now you’re going to make the butter.  For this, I HIGHLY recommend using a food processor.  Cut the putter into pieces (about 6-8 per stick) and throw in the bowl of your food processor. Then add the flour.  Pulse until the butter is crumbly and thoroughly chopped up.

You can see in my photo that I have some plastic wrap with flour sitting by my food processor.  Once the butter has been processed and ready, dump it out on the plastic wrap.  Then, using your hands, create an 8 x 8 square of butter on the plastic wrap.

Once you have formed the square (don’t worry if the butter kind of mushes together and melts), wrap it up and then put it in the fridge for at least a half an hour.

I think it is important to talk about why flour is added to the butter.  It doesn’t really have any purpose as far as flavor goes, but instead it is used to stabilize the butter.  Later on, we’re going to be rolling the butter into the dough (to help create the signature flaky layers of a croissant), and adding flour ahead of time helps to make sure that the butter won’t slip out of the seams when we roll out the dough.

Now that the butter is chilling, we’re going to head on back to the dough that we set aside earlier.  By now, the yeast should be active and you should see some bubbles in the dough. It won’t be overly foamy or anything, but the dough should have expanded.  At this point, it will be almost like a thick glue as far as consistency.  Stir in the vanilla and then stir in dry mix of flour-milk-salt that you had set aside as well.  I add about a quarter of the mix at a time, and I do stir this by hand.  I don’t want the mixer to make this dough tough, so hand mixing is best.

Once it is mostly combined, turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead the dough for about 8 minutes, until it feels elastic and springy.  Wrap loosely and chill in the fridge for 30 minutes.

I use this time to clean up the kitchen. 

Once the time has elapsed,  it’s time to turn the dough.

First, take the dough out of the fridge and put it on a lightly floured counter.  Gently roll it into a 12 x 12 square.  Then, take the butter square and place it on top, but in the way that makes it look like  a diamond on top of a square:

Then, take up the sides carefully, trying to not include a lot of air, to wrap the butter in the dough:

Pinch the seams together to form a nice little square of dough and butter.  Make sure the seams are really sealed here, and if you need to, use a little water along the edges.  Once it has been properly sealed, dust the rolling pin and counter with a little flour, and begin to roll the dough.

Starting from the center of the dough, roll the dough out into a 20 x 10 rectangle.  I never get out a ruler or anything, but the average traditional rolling pin is about 10 inches long, so it should be about the width of the pin on one side, and double on the other.

You can see that there are a couple of pats of butter that didn’t get completely crumbled when I made the butter.  In this case, it’s not the end of the world, but if a lot of butter had done that, it could have an effect on the results.

Once the dough has been rolled out, it’s time to make the first “turn.”  Do this by folding it like a business letter.  Bring one third to the center, and then the other third on top.

As long as the dough is still fairly cold and not falling apart, go ahead and start the second turn.  Do this by rolling out the dough out to a 10 x 20 rectangle again.  Then, wrap in plastic and chill for 30 minutes.

Once the 30 minutes is up, bring it back out and complete the process again.  Roll out – fold,  then roll out and fold again.

Then, wrap the dough loosely (because the yeast will expand) and chill at least to hours, though it is best chilled overnight.

Now comes the fun part.  You can divide and use the dough however you want.  In this case, I made a bunch of croissants that are filled with chocolate.  I also made some plain.

Here’s what I did.  I took the dough and rolled it out into a 12 x 18 rectangle.  Then, using my pizza cutting wheel, I trimmed all the edges.  This is important, because edges that are rolled will prevent the dough from puffing up.

Now you can divide the dough into pieces.  For the filled croissants, I cut them into rectangle shapes.  Use the pizza wheel to cut, because it makes everything so easy.

From this point, it is all about shaping.  With the squares here, I did two things.  First, I took each one and rolled it out to a more rectangular shape and then cut it in half.  To fill them, I put about one ounce of my favorite chocolate on the lower third, and then folded the croissant just like I did up above, when turning the down.  I give the dough a good “press” with the seam side down to help make sure the croissant doesn’t puff apart during baking.

For the regular crescent-shaped croissants, cut the elongated rectangle in half, going corner-to-corner, making two triangular shapes.

Then roll it up as the croissant should be.  Make sure the tip is tucked under the roll so that the croissant doesn’t unroll when baking.

Once everything is shaped, place on baking sheets and allow them to rise until doubled in size.  Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.  While the oven is preheating, brush the tops of the croissants with an egg wash.  On the chocolate-filled croissants, I like to sprinkle decorative white sugar on top of the egg wash before baking. Then bake for about 18-25 minutes, watching carefully so that they are beautifully golden brown.