Relearning Croissants

With the kids out of the house and unable to bring baked goods to the office, I mostly stopped baking croissants. Husband has been wanting to eat some recently, and we never seem to catch the short hours of our favorite local bakery. So I made some yesterday and baked a few this morning (putting most of the batch in the freezer after shaping). 

I used Hanseata's recipe : https://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/33346/croissants-buttery-heaven, which I've scaled down to match 2 ingots of butter (~220 grams). I substitute oil for butter in the detrempe (as I usually do). This makes 12 nice sized croissants, about 90 grams finished weight.

Process:

After mixing the dough to medium development (stretchy but not thin windowpane), let rest until puffed about an hour. Pat out to one inch thick rectangle and refrigerate a few hours. (errands run during that time. Make butter block using Trader Joe's store brand unsalted butter. I usually use Kerrygold, and while this batch was delicious, next time I'm going back to using Kerrygold - i prefer the flavor. Locked in the butter block and did a letter fold. Cover and refridgerate for 30 min. Second letter fold, fridge for 30 min, 3 letter fold. Roll out a bit (to ~15 in X 6 in) cover and refrigerate overnight. In morning, roll out to 20 in x 10 in and cut into 12 wedges. Stretch wedges slightly and shape into rolls. 4 were allowed to proof about 2 hrs before washing with cream and baking for 30 min at 375 F. The rest were placed in the freezer in pie tins until frozen and then piled into a freezer bag. Plan thaw them overnight in fridge before proofing and baking. 

Results and improvement notes:

1) The cream wash did not produce as nice and shiny a result as egg yolk wash - go back to that. 

2) I did not remove the dusting flour off well enough when rolling them up. There are bubbles where the layers separated (see below)

IMG_4328.jpeg

3) Could have baked for 5 more minutes. 

Overall, very successful for a startup after a long break