Home-Made Croissants

Thanks to my intrepid friend S, I launched myself into making croissants. You really have to be very brave to make croissants. The dough is easy enough if you have a good kitchen machine. Working the butter into the dough to create layers of dough interspersed by layers of butter... now THAT is very difficult. It's like making puff pastry bread style. Anyway... I went and burnt half my Saturday and all of my Sunday, just for the experience.

The Husband was quite pleased indeed. He's not very discerning though. If it smells of butter then it must be good. The Children well... they aren't very discerning either. If it's warm bread, then it must be good.

Me... I don't think they were very good croissants because the crumb inside was not loose enough. A good croissant has thin layers of bread separated by air... sort of like the bread version of a mille-feuille. You achieve this my interspersing butter and dough such that the dough layers separate from each other when cooked.

See HERE for the crumb of a good croissant.

I had some layers but not enough. Can be better. For what it's worth, here is the recipe and here are my pictures. The recipe is good except that I didn't follow the dough folding instructions exactly, resulting in fewer layers of dough than ideal.