Croissant dough is a feat of process, precision and perfection. At least as the French go. As I go, nothing is ever perfect but I do believe it is hard to make a descent croissant without at least an attempt at precision and a commitment to the process. What makes a croissant work is process: the step by step, meticulously defined act of layering dough and butter together to make the perfect, flaky pastry. It is a bread roll lifted to heavenly stature simply by the process with which the butter is added to the dough. The factors that make this possible are time and temperature.

As promised, this chapter on dough completes my dough staple kitchen necessities. Along with sourdough, pizza dough, brioche, pie dough and puff pastery, croissant dough is the final piece to highlight, what I believe, are the most essential doughs for any cook or baker in their kitchen or shop. Croissant comes last as it is often considered more difficult, but when practiced enough it becomes an easy go to for an assortment of morning pastry treats. If you bake bread, you may as well make croissants.

This tutorial is broken into five different chapters on process. The formula is simple and each step is rather basic. I suggest you watch the videos, as they will visually explain the process more accurately than I can explain in words.

I will be giving you two options for size in this tutorial, but you can bulk up or scale down based on this formula. I will give you the formula for the book size I work with on a regular basis, which is larger and takes a full 3 pounds of butter to laminate into the dough. The other size will be half of that with 1 1/2 pounds butter and a more reasonable and workable size for a smaller kitchen and operation. I will refer to the smaller size as BOOK ONE and the larger size as BOOK TWO for the purpose of this tutorial. BOOK ONE will yield roughly 12-16 croissants of different variations such as plain, pain au chocolat, almond croissants and ham and cheese. BOOK TWO will yield 24-30 croissants. In the months to come we will extend this croissant work to include morning buns and cinnamon rolls, as they are made with the same dough, but different shaping, filling and baking processes. Something to look forward to!

I break the croissant process into a few days. You can play around with what works for you. Step one is building your butter blocks. This can be done days in advance of your dough mix and lamination or can be done the same day. You may find that with larger batches it is more convenient to get this job done ahead of time by a day or two. Once the blocks are made they can be stored in the refrigerator until they are needed. Before you are ready to laminate the butter into the dough you will have to remove them from the fridge and soften them to the desired consistancy. As mentioned above, BOOK ONE will contain butter blocks of 1 1/2 pounds and BOOK TWO will contain butter blocks of 3 pounds. The process of pounding butter blocks is best explained through the below video so I suggest watching it.

The dough process is in two parts: mixing pre-ferments and then mixing the dough.

PART 1: PRE-FERMENTS: SOURDOUGH LEVAIN AND POOLISH:

This process is exactly the same as prepping to mix your sourdough bread, baguettes, and brioche. For croissant dough we will be using the sourdough levain and a poolish that we will mix up 6-7 hours prior to mixing our dough. I will give the rough formula for these ferments below but I suggest heading to the sourdough page to get a better handle on how to mix your levain if you are feeling unsure.

CROISSANT DOUGH FORMULA:

MAKING LEVAIN AND POOLISH: 6-7 HOURS PRIOR TO MIXING DOUGH:

MIXING DOUGH:

To mix the dough scale out your wet ingredients. Pour the milk into the mixer and then add the levain and poolish. Scale out your dry ingredients. Add the flour, salt, sugar and dry yeast to the wets. Mix until dough is well developed. Turn dough onto the table. Work into a somewhat rectangular shape and let rest, covered for 10 minutes. After the resting stage, press you dough down into a flattened rectangle and wrap in plastic wrap. Put in the refrigerator for two hours. The dough will ferment and develop before we laminate.

Lamination is the process of layering the butter into the dough. This process will take a couple of hours as the dough will have to be chilled back for roughly one hour after every turn. We will be doing 3 turns of our dough to develop the desired layers of dough and butter.

Our butter should be warm enough to be malleable. We don’t want it soft but we don’t want it so hard that it will break or crack. First we will encase the butter in the dough by rolling the dough out into a rectangle and laying the butter block in the center of the dough. Fold the sides of dough over the butter and seam it together in the middle. Seam the edges together as well. We do not want the butter to be able to escape the sides and make of mess of the rolling process.

Roll the dough thin and long enough so that you can fold the dough onto itself like an envelope fold. Watch the video tutorial below for a better understanding of what this should look like. Once folded, cover in plastic wrap and chill back for one hour. This is considered your first turn.

After your first hour has passed, you will repeat the rolling and folding process a second time. Chill for another hour. And then a third time. While making each fold make sure your edges are clean. You can slice off the rough ends if they look to uneven or ratty. The idea is that by the end of the third turn you have a well put together book of dough with even layers of butter and dough throughout. By slicing off the end pieces each turn you will get an idea of what these layers look like by looking at the cross section of the dough.

Shaping croissants is a peaceful and enjoyable experience. After all of the hard work of dough and lamination, shaping can be a methodical process.

You will roll out your dough to roughly 1/4 inch thick. We are looking to cut our croissants with a base of 4 inches and a height of 12 inches. With BOOK ONE, roll the dough into a rectangle with a width of 12 inches and cut your triangles across the length of the dough. With BOOK TWO, you will have a rectangle with a width of 24 inches and you will slice it down the middle lengthwise to create a top and bottom. From there you will cut your croissants from both halves which will give you double the number of croissants as BOOK ONE.

To roll your croissants, pick up the triangle and give it a tug to lengthen the shape a bit. Rest it on the table and using your fingers you are going to roll the dough into it’s crescent moon like shape. Watch the video tutorial below for a more detailed description and visual of how to do this.

Place the rolled croissants on a sheet tray with parchment and let proof. You have two options for proofing. You can hold the croissants over night in the refrigerator, covered in plastic. Remove in the morning, three hours before baking and let them warm up and proof. Then you can egg wash and bake. Or you can bake the same day as shaping. After you roll you croissants and tray them, proof for a few hours, egg wash and bake.

Egg wash is our usual, one part egg yolk to 2 parts heavy cream. Bulk it to whatever your needs are. I use a pastry brush for glazing the croissants with egg wash.

Bake the croissants at 400 degrees F for 15 or so minutes. I gauge when to pull my croissants from the oven when they are golden brown and shiny.

From this dough you can create a variety of different pastries. Below are three traditional croissants, made with the same dough, with added fillings for either sweet or savory and shaped with slight variation to make them stand out from one another.

Make fresh croissants and go to the recipe section to try the Blackberry Jam recipe too. They are perfect companions!