croissants, croissants, croissants
The time has come!
It started out as a joke, but with my freezer huffing and puffing with baked goods yet again, maybe starting a local facebook-page to get my friends to come by and pick up some croissants isn't such a bad idea after all, now that my 3 glorious weeks (holiday!) of immersing myself in laminated dough have kicked off.
For some crazy reason, don't ask me why, I have started this whole hunt for MY perfect croissant from two extremes of the flour spectrum, working my way to the soft spot that I'm looking for. I've given a dutch patentbloem a spin, because my theory was that it would be closest to the T45 used in France. On the other side I started out with manitoba.
Both bakes were performing way better than anticipated and were both....well..funny. The size and shape of the proofed Manitoba croissant was jaw dropping. Just to give you an idea; I put only 6 croissants on the entire tray, and still they were in each other's way.
The combination patentbloem & Julia Child-formula & Hitz technique turned out to be a good laugh. A short mix on low gluten with 100% butter, go figure! I haven't been to Hawaï, but the inside of my oven, with crispy volcanos oozing creamy lava into a yellow sea...did somehow provoke an association., even though the colors were a bit off. And you know what? Even though the second batch was superior in all the fields respected by us (home) bakers, I secretely like my croissant just the way they turned out; buttery bottom, crispy top and slightly caved in, or even, yes why not, fully exploded!
Alas, no pictures to show, because both batches were out the door before I had the chance. Well..only a few "ugly" ones remained behind. The baker's fate!
I'm going to continue my croissant quest with a visit to Paris. No idea what I'll do besides lurking around all the best bakeries until deep into the night, but that's the idea.. I guess.
I hope posting here with all the mobile tech stuff proves to be as much of a breeze as it always is and in case I turn silent, you can probably find me here.
Today I did my first radio interview for the BreadLab. I was surprized, and hadn't counted on media response that soon. It went well!
All of you out there, thank you! You are a great help and inspiration. And Floyd (if you're out there..lol); thank you for this wonderful site!
Freerk
P.S. You would do me a big favor endorsing my BreadLab iniative. Every "like" will get me closer to realizing a 6 episode documentary/road movie; chasing the best bread Europe has to offer. Thanks in advance!
Your volcanos made us laugh!
Enjoy Paris,
Juergen
Thanks! Looks like the weather is going to be very fine :-)
I sometimes used to create a new ocean made entirely of butter on a baking tray with croissants sitting on it like islands (my pre-cholestrol era), sometimes not. Have had no idea why it happened and why not every time, though I usually follow a same recipe......until when I attended the French Baking Course at Lighthouse Bakery last month, and made croissants which came out without a single drop of butter on the baking tray. The instructor told me it's very important both dough and butter are cooled at the same temperature before you started laminating. She said ' you always have to put the dough+butter into the fridge between laminating sessions anyway, so you might think it's irrelevant, but it's not.'
Haven't tried it at home yet (high cholestrol.....), but the croissants I had there were definitely one of the crispiest with beautiful layers.
Thought just to share my eye-opening experience. ;)
lumos
you mean like this?
Ummm....not quite. ;)
ooww, what a pity, because this method yielded the nicest ever batch, and the butter and dough were exactly the same consistency!