Home-made, freshly baked buttery croissants are a real triumph. Follow our step-by-step recipe by Chef Jehanne Ali for the classic French Croissants.
Cuisine : Baking Course : Dessert Skill Level : Novice
Prep : 240 mins Cook : 30 mins Ready in : 270 mins Serves : 6-8
INGREDIENTS:
- 500 gm Strong bread flour
- 2 tsp Yeast
- 1 headed tsp Salt
- 80 gm Sugar
- 80 gm Butter
- 200 ml Water
- 250 gm Butter (preferably European brand—and more particularly Normandy origin)
DIRECTIONS:
- Mix all the ingredients under ‘dough’ until stiff but elastic dough is formed. Keep dough to rise for about an hour until almost doubles in bulk.
- Shape into a rectangle and keep in the fridge ideally overnight, this is called retard process to stop the yeast from being too activated.
- If you are pressed for time, place dough in the fridge until it resembles the firmness of lamination butter.
- Ideally the dough and lamination butter should be of same firm consistency to avoid spillage during lamination process.
- Bring out the dough from the fridge. Shape into a rectangle.
- Place butter half way through the dough and cover with the other part of the dough. You should get a layer of dough-butter-dough. Seal the edges.
- Do a double turn followed by single fold turn. The other option is to do a 1-fold turn for 3 times.
- Keep the dough rested in the fridge between turns if the dough is too soft.
- Cut the dough into 2 sections.
- Take a section and roll to rectangle of at least 18 x 9 inches.
- Cut into triangles of at least 10 cm base. Stretch the dough and shape into croissant.
- Leave to rise for another hour.
- Brush the top with egg wash and bake at preheated oven of 200°C for 10 minutes, reduce heat to 180C and bake for another 15-20 minutes until golden.