2/100: Croissants- it's all in the fold!

Hey everyone!

This past Saturday I made croissants! Why, you ask, did I attempt such a crazy feat, only two bakes in? Well, one thing I have come to learn and love about my family is that they are incredibly competitive and put their 110% into everything. When I told them about my baking challenge there were few comments of "wow, that's so cool!" and a lot more: let me hurl the hardest possible thing I've ever heard of that Ellen can make for her challenge. Amongst the baked alaska and croquembouche recommendations there was a croissant recommendation. My first reaction: nope! But when my family member said "well, they're really easy, even though it takes 15 hours in total it only takes 1 active hour," my interest was piqued. That did sound easy! I couldn't say no to a challenge like that.

Looks like I'm cut from a similar cloth to my crew after all!

So, Saturday morning begins and I started with this recipe from Laura's Kitchen. In fact, even before I started, I watched Laura's entire video and it did look easy. Her dough was beautiful and sticky and completely do-able. I gathered all of the ingredients together and started.

I feel like eventually this is going to be a game- guess what Ellen's cooking from all of the ingredients she first lays out

I have to say- two minutes into mixing I knew something was terribly wrong. It looked like I had made pebbles and the dough wasn't coming together and it wasn't sticky, beautiful, or malleable like it had turned out on the video. How bad was it, 2 minutes in? I'll show you.

Yikes

Because it looked nothing like it had in Laura's video, I continued on mixing. And mixing. And mixing. It took 10 minutes for my roommate to come out of her room and ask what I was doing. It took another 5 minutes for my other roommate to come out of his room and say that a cement mixer would be needed to make my dough soft. The red flags were blaring- I knew I couldn't proceed with the next steps that were all about rolling out a malleable dough, so after enough cajoling I finally threw the dough away. Hooray! I finally listened to some red flags!

However, instead of giving up- I tried again! This time, I pivoted recipes and used a recipe that my roommate provided (thanks Brenna!). Turns out she had taken a croissant making class around a year ago with her dad. Fortuitous, to say the least.

It worked like a charm. The recipe was incredibly detailed with how much time to mix and chill the dough, and absolutely saved the day when it came to making my croissants. Second attempt, the best!

Now, due to my utter nerves from failing the first time, I didn't take many pictures. However, the number one trick about croissants is to keep everything cold! Dough, butter, everything! So, roll out fast (thaaaaat's why I didn't take pictures, haha), fold, refrigerate for an hour. Repeat this around five times and you'll have a beautiful piece of dough that looks almost bursting with butter.

See that yellow speckled in there?

From here, I cut the dough in half (on the short end, so the length was maintained), created triangles, and folded up the triangles to make beautiful baby croissants. One thing I have learned about myself as a baker is that I am absolute perfectionist. What that really means is that I'm the slowest baker (and especially dough roller-outer) you've ever met. For instance: I actually measured out the size of the dough with a tape measure (the heavy hardware kind, thanks Dan!). Thankfully, I had the moral support of my friend Tricia whom I gave instructions to tell me "move on!" if I ever started getting fixated on a tiny detail I absolutely had to adjust. This was needed more times than I'd like to admit (thanks Tricia!).

All the little triangles rolled up and egg washed!

Once you have croissant shapes you now have to "proof" the dough. This means letting the baby croissants rise for at least 1-2 hours in which they become adult, marsh-mellow-consistency croissants. It's the dead of winter and freezing, so I went with twos. After two hours (and two episodes of the show You- it's addictive and amazing and creepy and so well done, watch it) I refrigerated the croissants (very important to make sure the butter is cold before baking!), warmed up the oven, did a final egg wash, and popped them in the oven! The results? Well, they always say pictures speak louder than words...

So stoked they look like croissants!

Look at those layers!

(Almost) All of my roommates were home when the croissants came out of the oven, so we dug in and the croissants were great! I won't say 100% restaurant quality, but they were definitely tasty, flaky, and hit that "croissant spot."And if the stomach is the true vote: I made around 28 croissants, and only 1 remained 24 hours later. Success!

I'm really excited about this croissant adventure. One part of me is totally excited that I made croissants. Another part of me feels closer to my heritage (I'm 1/2 French Canadian). And an even bigger part of me is starting to feel more familiar in the kitchen. I've always loved baking and baked a ton in high school. However, when college hit I noticed that I stopped baking as often. I believe this was in part because baking felt like a chore and its own stress amongst school stress. I'm hoping this great graduate bakeoff will allow me to become so happy and comfortable with baking that I can officially "stress bake" and turn to it for relaxation in times of desperation.

I appreciate all of the help, support, and suggestions I've been receiving from everyone! My roommate Brenna wants to make a lemon meringue pie (apparently they are very challenging), and another friend of mine wants to bake fancier cakes. As for my next bake, tomorrow is my combined half birthday with my Stanford bestie Laura! Her birthday is the 7th of July, mine is the 9th of July, so our half birthday is the 8th of January! We're making lemon crumble cake!

See you soon!