{"id":4866,"date":"2015-02-09T23:33:34","date_gmt":"2015-02-09T22:33:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.roadtopastry.com\/blog\/?p=4866"},"modified":"2015-02-17T18:46:15","modified_gmt":"2015-02-17T17:46:15","slug":"recipe-croissant-dough","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.roadtopastry.com\/blog\/recipes\/laminated-doughs\/recipe-croissant-dough","title":{"rendered":"Recipe: Croissant dough"},"content":{"rendered":"

Croissants are simply one of those things you don’t make at home.<\/em>
\nCakes, you can make. A pastry cream, you can make. But who wants to make all the effort to make a laminated yeast dough<\/strong>?<\/p>\n

Me, of course.<\/em> The croissant dough<\/strong> is one of the fundamental pastry doughs, together with brioches<\/a>, milk bread<\/a> and Danish.<\/p>\n

\"croissant-dough-shaped\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Croissants are the\u00a0symbol<\/strong> of traditional (French) pastry<\/strong>: being able to bake\u00a0them at home is for me an enormous achievement<\/strong> (even though the dough is far from impossible to make and my result far from perfect)<\/em>.<\/p>\n

This dough is mainly used for croissants<\/strong> <\/a>and pains au chocolat<\/strong> and its procedure derives from puff pastry<\/strong><\/a>, with the addition of yeast.<\/p>\n

So how to\u00a0make croissant dough?<\/h3>\n

\"Recipe-Croissant-dough-Step10\"<\/p>\n

This\u00a0dough is laminated<\/strong>: this means that it is made of a kneaded d\u00e9trempe<\/strong> (basically flour, water and yeast plus sugar, salt and milk powder) and then a layer of butter<\/strong> is incorporated before “folding<\/strong>” multiple times.<\/p>\n

The dough contains a high percentage of butter<\/strong>: folding this dough multiple times will create\u00a0many layers of dough and butter. In order to keep all the layers well separated<\/strong> even after rolling the dough out multiple times, we need strong gluten strands<\/strong> in the d\u00e9trempe and therefore a\u00a0high-gluten flour<\/strong> is\u00a0recommended.<\/p>\n

\"Recipe-Croissant-dough-Step15\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Nevertheless, using a high-gluten flour can result in an over-elastic dough which is hard to roll out, so make sure not to over-knead it<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Note: strong flours have a high \u201cW\u201d<\/strong>, a technical parameter which is usually never mentioned in supermarket flours: as a rule of thumb, you can opt for a high-protein flour<\/strong>, or bread flour, or, best of all, the so-called\u00a0\u201cManitoba\u201d flour<\/strong> (\u201cfarine de gruau\u201d in French)<\/em>.<\/p>\n

What are the steps to make croissant dough?<\/h3>\n

The procedure to make croissants\u00a0is the following:<\/p>\n

\"croissant<\/a><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Knead the d\u00e9trempe (with yeast)<\/li>\n
  2. Ferment the dough: either until doubled in size (~1 hour) at room temperature or for longer times (best overnight) in the fridge<\/li>\n
  3. Fold in butter<\/li>\n
  4. First lamination: folding the dough in 3<\/li>\n
  5. Second lamination: folding the dough in 4<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Preparing the final products\u00a0will also require\u00a0proofing<\/strong> (as it happens in all yeast doughs), but that’s another story! The first step is always the dough: so let’s get down to work…<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    \n \n

    Croissant dough<\/h2>\n
    \n \n \"\"Print recipe<\/a>\n