(lively piano music)
- I'm Keith Cohen.
I'm the owner of Orwashers Bakery.
We're in one of New York City's oldest
and most iconic food establishments.
And this is how we make our croissants.
I wanna take this opportunity to introduce Youssouf.
He is our croissant master.
Here in our giant mixer, we are gonna add
flour, milk, salt, sugar, milk powder.
He adds milk powder because it adds,
it's dehydrated, so it acts more as a solid.
When we first met Youssouf, we tasted his croissant,
so, when you look at it and you taste it,
you don't change his recipe.
Yeast, water.
Ice water is very important, especially during the summer.
It brings the mix temperature down.
So you don't want too hot of a dough because
what's gonna happen is, A, the dough
is gonna proof, but more importantly,
your butter is gonna start to break down.
(lively jazz music)
And finally, butter.
We source our butter from France.
Every country has their own terroir.
Because butter is so integral to the taste
of the croissant, we felt it necessary.
Once the dough is mixed, we wanna be able
to pull it out and chunk it into six-kilo increments.
Much like a lot what we do here, there's a resting period.
Pre-shape gives strength.
It's one of the critical things, almost like bread,
is you have to give strength to your dough.
In order to pre-shape it, you wanna make sure
you're gentle with the dough, and you wanna fold it
under itself without damaging it too much.
That dough has to have that stretch and that shine.
When we talk about letting the dough proof or rest,
you'll also see about a doubling
in the size of the volume.
You're gonna punch the dough down
after it's doubled in size.
It's gonna give it a time to deflate,
you'll take a little bit out of the gas.
It will tighten up on you a little bit,
and it'll be ready for the freezing process.
During the freezing process, because we're not doing
blast freezing, the dough is still fermenting,
which is also very important.
One of the keys to croissants are,
there's not only butter in the dough,
but there's butter that gets laminated into the dough.
So you're putting dough with butter sandwiched,
and then you are passing it through a sheeter,
which stretches out the dough
and makes it a little bit thinner.
Again, what you're looking for is that layered effect.
The way you're able to do that is through folding
the dough again and turning it, so it becomes exponential.
Don't hold me to my math, but once you have four layers,
your next set, you will probably have
somewhere around 16 layers.
And the sign of a good croissant is you should
be able to see the laminates.
Once it's finalized sheeting, it's now ready for cutting.
So we have to have a 10-foot table
now so we can lay out the entire sheet.
And again, it is about the timing,
so we're able to cut it quickly.
After it gets cut into strips,
it now has to be cut on the angle
so you can get that beautiful triangle.
The shape of our croissants aren't crescent,
they are oblong.
Youssouf has developed, I believe it's somewhat
his own technique of taking the croissant
and giving it a little bit of a stretch.
And with each little stretch or each little pat
that you see it does, it gives a little bit extra,
so you get an extra roll, and at the same time
it gives it a little bit more strength.
So in addition to our regular croissant,
we do a pain au chocolat.
It's a little bit easier to roll, but again,
there is a technique, the way we use the chocolate batons
and making sure that it's rolled tight enough
so they don't melt when they're baked.
Once again here, temperature's working against us.
Once we're done rolling for a particular sheet,
whether it's a plain croissant or a pain au chocolat,
we're going to put it right back in the freezer.
The proofing stage is a highly critical
stage for croissants.
Things that get overproofed could have a tendency
to collapse in the oven, and/or one of the key indicators
is the butter coming out of the product.
The egg wash gives a nice shine to it, it's more aesthetics.
We bake our croissants off at 350 degrees
in a convection oven.
What's happening now, now that the heat is starting
to bake the croissant, again, you are getting
some oven spring to it, you are developing
that beautiful honeycomb interior,
the butter is starting to melt throughout the product,
not completely out of the product,
but into the product itself, and again,
through the Maillard reaction,
you're getting a beautiful, crisp crust to it.
Best time to enjoy a croissant
is when it's room temperature.
You're allowing the butter to get reabsorbed into it
and allow some of the gas to escape.
It's very important to achieve all your full flavors
after the product reaches room temperature.
When you cut it open, you will see
this beautiful honeycomb interior,
and that is really one of the keys
to a great croissant.
On a well-baked croissant, you should have
a beautiful crackle to the crust,
and you should have a soft and supple interior,
and the butter, if it's high-quality,
should taste very, very neutral.
To me, croissants are the epitome of French baking.
And that is how croissants are made.
(lively jazz music)