Hi Bold Bakers!
Holiday baking is not over because I’ve got a bonus video for you thanks to LG.
We are going to make easy, homemade chocolate croissants baked in my new, LG ProBake Convection
Oven.
So let’s get baking.
So I’m not going to lie to you, homemade croissants do take time to make however, the
method is actually really easy.
I have found the simplest recipe to give you beautiful, homemade croissants.
In a large bowl, add in your flour.
Then on one side of the bowl, add in your salt and your sugar.
On the other side, we’re going to add in our dried yeast.
We keep them separate because if the salt lays on the yeast, it will deactivate it.
And then with a wooden spoon, just mix all your ingredients together.
So our next step is to add in the butter.
Now normally you would get a big slab of butter and continuously fold it into your pastry.
I am going to eliminate all of those steps by using frozen butter and a box grater.
This will give you the exact same result but save you so much time.
Directly grate your frozen butter into your flour mix.
Grating it is such a fantastic idea because you get really small, pea-size pieces of butter,
which is exactly what you want.
Also, you don’t have to touch it.
You can do it really fast.
Try to do this step fast so your butter stays nice and cold.
And there you have it.
Look at all those beautiful butter curls.
Now all you want to do, is take a wooden spoon and then just mix them throughout the flour.
If you see any big lumps of butter, just break them down with your fingers.
You want everything to kinda be the same size.
This is exactly what you want; little pieces of butter distributed all the way throughout
your flour.
Ok lovely.
To this, we’re going to add in our warmed milk.
Pour in your milk all over your flour.
And then with a wooden spoon, bring it together until it forms a soft dough.
Now I know this dough looks like it might be dry but it’s actually the perfect texture.
You don’t want to add more liquid and you don’t want to continue mixing it.
Just push it together with your hands and you’ll feel it start to come together really
fast.
Two seconds ago this looked like it was too dry but now we have our dough and we have
a clean bowl and you know what that means.
It’s perfect.
So now we’re going to take this guy and we’re going to wrap him in cling wrap.
Now we’re going to pop this guy in the fridge for a minimum of an hour and a half.
We want it to get nice and cold, the butter to chill so it’ll be so much easier to roll
out.
Our dough is nice and chilled so now it’s ready to roll it out.
Now this is where the technique comes in, however the good thing is it is the same step
over and over and over again.
So it starts to kind of click with you what exactly you have to do.
I’m going to put the steps broken down on my website, biggerbolderbaking.com along with
the recipe.
Lightly dust your surface with flour.
And also, you might want to put some on top of the pastry so your rolling pin doesn’t
stick.
And now we’re going to roll it out.
And I’m going to put these measurements on the website.
Roll it out nice and long and thick.
When it comes to rolling your croissants, you want to do it smoothly one way and then
the other way.
You don’t want to roll it out all different angles and I’ll tell you why.
Because in a croissant, there is a structure like this and this.
I think of them as threads.
If you start rolling it like this and all over the place, all of the structure will
get thrown off.
And we want it to be like this and like this to get a perfect croissant.
Now that it’s rolled, we’re going to do a book fold.
Now we’re going to take half of the pastry and bring it into the middle just like a book.
Now you see this flour here, brush it off with your hands.
We do not want extra flour on our dough.
Now go with the other side, and do the same thing.
Bring it into the middle.
Now I know that these aren’t perfectly aligned, but we’re going to bring them in and try
to get them as straight as possible.
And now what we’re going to do is turn our dough this way.
And then we’re going to do the same again.
We’re going to bring in the edges.
Dust off the flour, bring in this guy.
Now you see those jaggedy edges?
We are actually starting to line everything up.
Great!
Now we’re going to take this guy and we’re going to flip it over with the seams facing
down.
We’re just going to go and repeat that process all over again.
At any stage, if you feel like your dough is getting too soft, pop it back into the
fridge for 20 minutes and let it cool down.
Roll it out again.
We’re rolling it out to the same measurements as we did before.
Just with one turn you can see already how smooth our dough is getting.
Ok so we’ve rolled it out to the same size and thickness, and then we’re going to do
our book fold again.
Line up the pastry as best you can, I like to push them in together to make them align.
And then we’re going to turn it, and then we’re going to do our fold just like we
did before.
Trying to keep everything aligned.
There we go, you can just give it a helping hand with your fingers.
You see already how well this is starting to take shape and starting to look cleaner?
Perfect.
We’re going to flip it over again with the seams down and then one last time we’re
going to roll it out.
Roll lengthways.
Roll it out wide.
At any stage, if you’re getting too much resistance from your pastry, just let it relax
in the fridge.
And then for the last time, we’re going to do our book fold.
I love how already you can see how smooth your pastry is starting to get.
And to see all the lines being much smoother and naturally joining up together.
Okey dokey and then our fold over here one more time.
Line everything up together.
And then flip it over.
I know it seemed like it took a little bit of time but this technique is much faster
than doing a traditional recipe and at the end of it, we have a lovely, finished homemade
croissant.
So at this stage, we’re going to wrap it in cling film and put it in the fridge to
let it chill for another few hours.
Or you can even leave it overnight and then finish preparing them tomorrow.
Our dough is nice and chilled so our next step is to roll it out and shape it into croissants.
We are going to roll it out until it is about a quarter of a millimeter thick.
Trim off the edges of you pastry so you get a nice straight line.
The bits you trim off, don’t waste them.
You can still bake them off, they’re just not going to be croissants.
Now that we have our angles nice and straight, we’re going to measure our croissants and
cut them.
I’m going to measure a width of 3 inches.
The length of our croissants, and remember that this is making two, is going to be 12
inches.
And then we’re going to join the two lines together to meet in the middle.
Now that we have one rectangle, we’re going to cut this in half diagonally and this will
give us two croissants.
Now you have one lovely triangle.
Cut a little slit at the base of the triangle around an inch.
Now because we’re doing chocolate croissants, I’m going to lay some little chocolate disks
in the middle.
If you don’t like chocolate you can leave it out, no problem.
And then simply takes these two ends, turn them outwards and we’re gently going to
roll up our croissants.
Look at that.
Once you roll it up with that little point, we’re going to put it underneath so he doesn’t
unravel while baking.
And there you have it, a gorgeous, homemade chocolate croissant.
Now just keep cutting out your dough and rolling your croissants.
Homemade croissants are definitely a labor of love but when they come out of the oven
and they’re all beautiful, it’s well worth it.
Our homemade chocolate croissants look beautiful.
I’m very proud of these little guys.
So at this stage, it’s an important tip.
You can actually freeze these right now.
Then, whenever you want to bake off fresh-baked croissants, take them out of the freezer,
proof them, and then pop them into the oven.
It works really, really well.
My LG ProBake Convection Oven actually has a proof setting for yeasted doughs so I’m
going to put my croissants in there.
It also has double capacity so you can proof in one oven and bake in the other at the same
time.
Croissant dough does take a while to proof.
You’ll know when it’s ready when the edges have smoothed and they’ve grown in size.
Before we bake them off, I like to brush them with some egg wash because it gives them a
lovely golden brown color.
This makes the top really nice and shiny.
Now these guys are ready for the oven.
Bake your croissants at 450 degrees Fahrenheit for 10 minutes, then reduce the oven to 375
degrees Fahrenheit for another 5-10 minutes.
Our timer’s gone off, the croissants look fantastic, so it’s time to take them out.
These croissants look fantastic.
You can see they’ve got a lovely golden brown color all over, which is what the convection
oven does.
Now I’m going to pull one of these open and let you see the inside, all the melted
chocolate.
You can see all the beautiful layers we created by folding and rolling and folding and rolling.
All of our hard work is right here.
It looks gorgeous.
Now I’m going to take a bite.
Heaven!
Absolute heaven.
I know they’re a lot of work, but they’re well worth it.
I really hope you enjoyed my holiday recipes and if you missed any, make sure you check
them out.
Thank you so much for watching and I’ll see you back here this Thursday for more Bigger
Bolder Baking.