Some of you (mainly Brad and Melanie) know I've been talking about making croissants from the beautiful cookbook, Tartine, for a couple months. I finally braved the daunting five-page recipe and did it. It took forever, and now it's taking even longer because I'm blogging about it. However, they actually turned out--sort of. They tasted amazing. They were the best croissants I've ever had. The only problem was that they were huge! I called them my everything's-bigger-in-Texas croissants. They were ginormous!
Here's what I mean by daunting and forever:
Friday night
- Make preferment (I thought this would be fast, but it turned out to take at least a half hour)
- Make dough
- Let dough rest for 15-20 minutes
- Mix dough until smooth and elastic (about 4 minutes)
- Let dough rise and increase by half (about 1.5 hours)
- Form dough into 2" thick rectangle
- Place dough in refrigerator to chill 4-6 hours
- Mix butter (almost three cups!) until malleable about an hour before taking dough out of refrigerator
- Roll dough into 28x12 rectangle, "spot" the butter over two-thirds of the length of the rectangle, fold dough into thirds and seal seams
- Again roll dough into 28x12 rectangle and fold again in the same manner
- Place dough in refrigerator for 1.5-2 hours to relax the gluten
- Again roll dough into 28x12 rectangle and fold into thirds
- Place dough in freezer to chill until evening/night
- Place dough in refrigerator before going to bed
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Sunday
- Roll dough into 32x12 rectangle (this was hard as the dough was cold and had never been stretched this much)
- Cut dough into long triangles
- Roll triangles into croissants
- Let pastries rise 2-3 hours (croissants should double in size)
- Make egg wash
- Brush croissants with egg wash and let dry for 10 minutes
- Bake 15-20 minutes (rotating after 10 minutes)
- Cool croissants
- Eat croissants
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