Ads 468x60px

Monday, February 6, 2012

Croissant

Bonjour friends...this is my first encounter with French cooking. And well what better way to start than with baking. Presenting to you, the classic French puff pastry....Croissant. The recipe does not have too many ingredients, but requires time, patience and lot of love.

Ingredients:
All purpose flour (Maida) - 4 cups plus some extra flour for dusting
Active dry yeast - 1 tbsp
Sugar - ¼ cup
Milk - ½ cup, luke warm
Water - ½ cup, luke warm
Salt - 2 ¼ tsp
Butter sticks - 200 gms, cold

Egg wash-
Egg - 1
Water - 1 tbsp

Method:
Take milk in a large bowl, add yeast, whisk nicely. Add sugar and salt, mix well. Now add 4 cups of flour, mix thoroughly (no need to completely knead the dough at this point). Roughly shape into a ball place it in a large plate and cover it nicely with cling wrap. Refrigerate overnight.

Place a large piece of cling wrap on the counter top, place the butter stick on top and cover it with another cling wrap. Now gently start beating the butter flat with a rolling pin. Flat it to around 1/2 cm thick. Repeat for the the rest of the sticks. Put the flattened butter back to the refrigerator. Now take out the dough and roll out to from a 12 inch square. Place the flat butter sheets in the centre of the square and arrange next to each other. Fold one flap of the dough covering the butter, stretching it slightly so that the point just reaches the center of the butter. Repeat for rest of the flaps. Press the edges together to completely seal the butter inside the dough. Dust the dough and start rolling the dough lengthwise while keeping the width as is. Roll till the length is around 24 inches and width about 8 inches (Keep dusting the dough making sure it does not stick to the counter top). Now fold one end of the dough (along the length) till the middle, and then fold the other end to the middle (both ends meet at the center). Fold the dough from the center so that the dough forms a  6 inch x 8 inch rectangular shape. Place the dough in a baking tray, cover with cling wrap and refrigerate for ½ hour. Take out and roll the dough till the length is around 24 inches (lengthen the other sides this time, viz the open ended sides) and repeat the above process for three more times refrigerating the dough every time for ½ hour.

Once set in the refrigerator, take out and roll into a 40 inch x 8 inch long sheet. With a scale, make marks at 5 inch intervals on one side lengthwise. Mark intergvals of 2 ½ inch on the other side. With the help of a pizza cutter, cut triangles such that the base of the triangle is 5 inch. Once done, make 1 cm long cut right in the middle of base of the triangle. Now pull the edges slightly (on either sides of the cut) apart and fold and keep rolling in-wards towards the pointed edge of the triangle to form the basic croissant shape.  Now bring both the edges together to form the final croissant shape. Place it over butter paper set on a baking tray. Leave it in a warm place (around 30º C) for proofing. Make sure the place to not too warm or else the butter would just melt away. Keep it for around 2 hours.
Beat the egg and water in a bowl to form the egg wash. Now brush the egg wash gently (do not apply pressure on the croissants, they are very delicate at this point). Pre-heat the oven @ 200º C and bake for 20 minutes (after the first 10 minutes rotate the sheet and continue baking).

Enjoy the delicate and buttery flavoured croissant.

4 Comments:

Anonymous said...

For your first time you have done absolutely beautiful work.

Anup Raghavan said...

Thanks.

Raj said...

That is awesome , just couldn't believe my eyes that it is you... :)

Anup Raghavan said...

Thank you sir. Glad you like them.

Post a Comment