- Since we do croissants every day,
I decided to go along the road with you
and share how croissants are being made
from the flour bag to the freshly baked pastry.
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Croissant weigh up is always the biggest one
and we barely ever do less
than 40 kilograms flour mixed batch.
We do separate weigh up for the poolish and the dough
and outside, the bag, we write down how much water we need
to add for the poolish and how much milk we need
to add for the dough.
This is a crucial component of the croissant dough.
We mix the poolish a day before by adding some water,
yeast and flour.
Mix for a few minutes and arranging into containers,
leaving enough space to ferment.
If you don't leave enough of space, it may happen this.
Poor William had to sort out my mistake
but hey, after that,
I have never made the same mistake again.
We'll leave it to proof on slow mode.
Next day, we take it out
and it should look like this.
Bubbly and a bit sour.
Since we have all ingredients ready from yesterday,
on a mixing day we weigh up only milk.
Then we head to the bread section as we need a massive mixer
for the amount we normally do.
Just to give you a clear idea,
one dough is 6.8 kilograms of croissant dough.
Today I'm doing a small batch, only 15 doughs.
If you translate that to numbers,
it is 102 kilograms of dough.
Once all ingredients are in the bowl,
we mix the dough for a couple of minutes.
Scrape down the sides
as we don't want any wastage or loss in weight.
Giving a few extra minutes of mixing
and leaving to rest with plastic dough bags on top.
That will take around 20 minutes.
We remove the plastic dough bags
as the dough rested enough
and here is the part where you need to use your muscles
and physical strength
as now we're taking the whole dough out.
We slice the dough in smaller pieces
in order to transfer to our trolley
and then we go back to the pastry side
where we will portion this huge mountain of dough
in smaller pieces.
The reason why I'm tired after work.
- [Cameraman] You don't need a workout with this.
- We're weighting up each piece precisely
and folding into oblong shape.
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Leaving to rest on the workbench
and then placing trays with some lined paper,
pressing a bit and putting into plastic dough bags.
All this trolley with the dough goes
into the walk-in fridge for now.
After the dough has rested and proofed enough,
we're placing them into the freezer.
So we're preparing the dough to put in the freezer.
So basically, it comes in stages.
We need it to proof a bit
and now we need to cool it down.
First, we are pressing down the dough,
then putting into a freezer
and finally, putting these blue ice blocks on top.
We will leave them to rest 'til the night baker comes
and takes the dough out for the morning shift.
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The morning shift starts at 6 AM
and the croissant dough is already defrosted.
We start lamination straightaway in the morning
as it takes a couple of hours.
The first step is to flatten the batter.
Each dough requires two blocks of butter.
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We roll the dough to the required length and thickness.
We'll put flattened butter between the layers of the dough.
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Rolling again.
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Then trim the edges where you cannot even see the layers
of butter and dough.
We close the dough as nicely as possible,
folding the trimmed ends inside.
The ideal size of laminated dough
should be as big as the metal trays we use here.
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Then we do the second fold,
which is much faster.
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We still trim the ends of the laminated dough
and close nicely this way.
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Placing the dough in the plastic bag.
Then we leave the dough to rest into the freezer.
After it has rested, we're taking it out
and start rolling.
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While the dough is still cold,
we roll it 'til we reach the exact width.
And then turn it and continue rolling.
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We lay the dough on the clean workbench,
folding it in half horizontally and trim the ends.
Then we cut the dough along the opposite site
and after that, simply cut in triangles
for the croissants.
We keep the consistency
by checking weight of every single piece.
I leave you to watch how the croissants are being shaped.
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Let's say on a normal day we do around 500 croissants
but once we bake them,
we leave a good portion of them for almond croissants,
which are later being filled with almond paste
and topped with flaked almonds.
After we have finished with shaping,
we lay 12 croissants per tray
and leave them in a proofer,
which is set to proof at a certain time.
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For some unexplainable reason,
we love making baby croissants.
Look how cute they are.
Which size do you prefer?
Let me know in the comments down below.
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Here, croissants are perfectly ready to go to the oven,
giving them a final touch of egg wash
and filling the oven with pastries.
Right proofing time is an essential part
as over-proofed pastry won't expand much during baking
and it will be flat or under-proofed
will be small and dense.
In the blink of an eye, they are done.
Look at this golden beauty.
I hope you got the flavour
what it takes to make a croissant
and hopefully, next time you eat a croissant,
you will remember how many loving hands contributed
to its creation.
Thank you for watching and see you next week.
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