Let Them Eat ... Croissants!

OK, this is it! Brandi Dean (Jenni's sister) here for one last guest post! (Miss the first two? Find them here and here.) And while I wouldn’t necessarily say that I saved the best for last (I mean, did you see all the fun stuff I did?), I would say that I saved the most useful-to-you for last.

Here’s how you can have a little piece of Paris for yourself!

As I mentioned in the last post, Nicole and I took a cooking class from La Cuisine, a English-language cooking school in the heart of Paris, started by a woman from Chicago. We came across a recommendation for it early in our trip planning and signed up for it on the spot. Seriously, it’s the very first thing we committed to.

And it was definitely one of the highlights. If you’re going to Paris, get yourself signed up! Visit lacuisineparis.com. Of course, you won’t need the croissant class after reading this, but they offer lots of other classes on baguettes and macarons and French lunch foods and French diner foods and how to shop the Paris markets. And maybe, possibly, you might still learn a little something from taking the croissant class for yourself, so, really, that’s still an option, too.

But you’re not here for a commercial; you’re here for a croissant! So here we go.

Starting with the pastry itself …

Ingredients:
10.5 ounces (or 300 grams) flour
1 teaspoon (or 5 grams) salt
1 ounce (or 28 grams) of sugar
½ tablespoon (or 5 grams) instant yeast
3.5 ounces (or 100 grams) cold milk
½ cup (4 ounces or 114 grams) cool water
1 tablespoon (or 14 grams) unsalted butter
And then another 7 ounces (200 grams) more of unsalted butter at room temperature.
Plus an egg white or two for brushing on before baking.

And for the fillings:
Chocolate:
Chocolate bars – the school had bulk bars that I don’t think I’ve seen here, but I think any chocolate would do. You’ll just want to cut either it or your dough to size.

Almond cream:
4 ounces (112 grams) sugar
4 ounces (112 grams) butter
2 eggs
4 ounces (112 grams) almond flour (which is finely ground almonds)
1 ounce (28 grams) flour
And almond (or rhum or orange) extract for flavoring.
Plus shaved almonds for topping.

These measurements are probably a little different from what you’re used to seeing (at least they were for me). We measured everything out on a scale for accuracy.

I’ll admit that it was certainly much easier than trying to keep track of exactly how many cups of flour you’d already doled out and how many you had left to go.

Anyway, so first things first. Melt your 1 tablespoon of unsalted butter and put it to the side. Then combine the flour and salt reaaaaal well. Chef Justin from Nacogdoches says that’s important because you don’t want your salt and your yeast to come into contact, because the salt will deactivate the yeast.

Then you pour the well-mixed flour and salt out onto your (clean) countertop and build a moat by swirling your fingers around the middle. Or maybe it's more of a pond. Whatever this looks like to you:

 Then separately, you take your yeast and pour it into the middle of the moat, like a little island, thusly:

And do the same with your sugar.

Then you combine your melted butter, the water and the milk, and pour them into the middle, like so:

And then you start mixing. With one hand behind your back (or in my case, on the camera) because your mixing hand is going to get goopy.

Interesting, right? You know how bread recipes are always saying, combine slowly, alternating wet and dry ingredients? Well this way, you don’t have to think about it. You automatically have to go slow, because if you don’t your wet ingredients will break through the dry ingredients and start dripping onto the floor.

Anyway. So that ball of dough in the mixing bowl in that last picture? That’s what you end up with. At this point the dough should be firm but springy.

And here is where some of the waiting comes in. You need to cover the bowl and put it in the refrigerator for at least six hours, and up to three days. (In case you’re wondering, we did our class backward, using the dough already made by the previous class to make our actual croissants, and then making the dough for the next class.)

When it comes out, it should look a little something like this:

OK, now, remember that big block of butter from the ingredients list? The 7 ounces? Here’s where it comes in.

Take the block of butter and take your rolling pin and beat it. Beat it until it’s nice and pliable, so that you can form it into a nice, neat square (about 6 inches), like this:

Then set it aside, take out your dough, and form it into a ball.

Then you’re going to start rolling out your dough for the first of many, many times. For this particular time, you’re aiming to make a kind of clover shape, which your nice square of butter can then fit into the middle of.

To get this, you really have to use the ball of your hands to work  the rolling pin and put pressure on the parts you want to roll out. Chef Justin from Nacogdoches recommended these kind of rolling pins, without the handles, because you have more control over them.

Now. Wrap the dough up around the butter, like you’re swaddling a baby:

Cute, huh?

Here’s the cool part – the part that gets you all those nice, flakey, buttery layers.

Roll it out into a rectangle. About 8x16 inches.

What you’ve got there is three layers – a layer of butter between two layers of dough.

Now fold it like a letter, and roll it out again.

Now you’ve got 9 layers. Fold it up like a letter and roll it out again.

Now you’ve got 27 layers of dough, butter, dough, butter.

Fold it up again, but this time, you want to do what’s called a complex fold. With the dough turned horizontal, fold the outside quarters in until they touch in the middle. Like one of those presentation posterboards. Know what I’m talking about?

And then fold the two halves in on each other.

Then roll it out and do it again, until you end up with a cute little book of dough. By then you'll have  more than 100 layers, but I’m not going to attempt any more math for fear of embarrassing myself (if I haven’t already!).

This is actually where we started the class. And before we go on, a few notes on the rolling and folding. When you roll it out, you want the dough to be in neat, even rectangles, to make the folding easier. Again, you can just use the rolling pin to put more pressure on the parts where the dough is thicker. But be careful around the edges – you want to keep the butter layers sealed in.

And as you fold it, always turn it so that the folds open like a book. This apparently helps you keep track of exactly where you are in the process. I didn’t really follow how, exactly, but Chef Justin from Nacogdoches seemed adamant that we must do this.

Anyway. So now you’ve got your dough all made.  We sometimes had to put ours in the fridge for a few minutes to let it get firm enough to work with. And you have to simultaneously keep adding flour to your work place so that the dough doesn’t stick to the counter or rolling pin, but also keep brushing it off (that’s what the little basting brushes were for) so that the dough will stick to the other layers of dough.

Now. Roll it out one more time, into a nice neat rectangle.

Here you have some choices to make

You can cut them into cute little triangles to roll into traditional croissants.

Or you can cut them into smaller rectangles and add bars of chocolate (we put one at the end and then another at the first turn), to make Pain au Chocolat – chocolate bread, or what we usually call chocolate croissants.

This was hands down the favorite as far as taste went, but it has chocolate in it, so who’s really surprised there?

But for the cute factor, the Croissant aux Amandes – croissants with almonds – won out.

We did this two different ways.

Cut your dough into little squares and then cut from each point of the square almost to the middle, like this:

Then you can add your filling (combine the butter and sugar and mix until creamy; add the eggs one at a time and mix until completely combined; add the almond flour and the regular flour and mix, and then the flavoring and mix), and fold in every other corner to make pinwheels:

Or you can take the square and almost cut out a smaller square – but only almost. Leave the dough connected at two of the corners. Then take the unconnected corners and crisscross them. You’ll end up with a little cradle in the middle where you can add your almond filling:

(And with this one, you can also add some extra almond shavings on top.)

Whichever you decide (and no reason you can’t choose them all!), put them on a baking sheet and then let them sit at room temperature for 1.5 hours or more, until they’re slightly puffy.  Brush them with egg white afterwards, to make them especially golden.

Preheat your oven to 450 degrees, but before you pop your croissants in reduce the heat to 375.

If you’re making small croissants or pastries, cook them for about 20 minutes, rotating the tray halfway through for evenness. If you’re making full-size croissants, bake them for 30 minutes, again, rotating halfway through.

And then … voila! You’ve got beautiful golden croissants that, trust me, you’re going to want to eat right away.

(And trust me, we did! But we also saved them and ate them for breakfast pretty much every other day of the trip. They weren’t as good as fresh from the oven, but they weren’t bad, either!)

So, in the words of another mistress of French cooking – Bon Appetit!

PS - Thanks, Jenni, for letting me take over your blog for a couple of days!