Flaky Croissants Dough - How to make a Flaky Croissants Dough.

I always thought making croissants is difficult and tedious process. After making this dough let me assure you it's easy but time taking and requires patience. Since I made this in winter rolling the dough was easy and did not give me trouble at all. I enjoyed this full process of making this dough right from start to finish, which took me 3 days. When I finished making the final product the joy is in-explainable .. it was like an achievement for me..

The process is long but not difficult to make. I raided YouTube before beginning, to get a clear picture of the entire process.  Would suggest that, before you undertake making this croissant dough do watch videos on You Tube.  When you watch videos, you will not see this method of making the croissants dough, but, I have tried many methods while making the puff pastry dough and found this the easiest way.

With this dough you can make plain croissants or with chocolate (Pain au Chocolate), Danish pastries and many more recipes. Please read the notes before beginning...

I made plain croissants and Petite Pain au Chocolate from this dough. So let's go to the process ....

Ingredients
300 Grams All-Purpose Flour
1/2 Cup Cold Water
1/2 Cup Cold Milk
2 Tablespoons Sugar
1 Egg
2 Tablespoon Butter
1 Teaspoon Instant yeast
1 Teaspoon Salt
A little more flour for dusting/ rolling out dough

For the butter layer
225 Grams Cold Unsalted Butter

Method
First Day
Make the dough like you make a bread dough (check bread recipes on my blog to see the process). After making this dough refrigerate it overnight.

Second Day
Laminate the dough
Remove the butter from the fridge and keep it on your kitchen counter to make it pliable. Take the dough out from the fridge place it on a lightly floured work surface. 

Roll it out to a 14 inch x 6 inch rectangle and brush off the excess flour. 

Take the butter and spread it evenly on 3/4 of the dough. 

Then fold it see the pics. Make a book fold of the dough.

Keep the dough in a floured tray, then refrigerate the dough in a cling wrap for 10 to 15 minutes. 

After 15 minutes the dough is cold not hard take out from the refrigerator. Place it on a floured work surface and the folded sides vertical. 

Then lightly press the dough with a rolling pin and then with light pressure start rolling it by lightly rolling from the middle towards the top and the same way from the middle towards you. Keep turning the sides and roll it again from middle towards the top and then towards you, With the rolling pin, firmly press along the dough uniformly to elongate it slightly. Focus on lengthening rather than widening the dough and keeping the edges straight, make it into a rectangle 10" x 5". If the ends lose their shape, gently reshape the sides with your hands. Brush off the excess flour, again book fold it and keep this dough in a floured tray wrapped in cling film for 15 minutes to relax and chill the dough.. Place a paper mark on the dough writing first fold, Repeat this process another 3 times each time refrigerate and mark the folds of the dough before you start the next rolling the same way.

Roll and fold the dough exactly in the same way for the fourth time and keep it in the tray, cover with cling wrap, sealing all sides and refrigerate overnight.

Third Day 
The dough is ready to use.

Divide the dough according to the recipe needed 

keep the remaining cling wrapped in the freezer for use later. This dough remains good for 2 months.

To use it remove it from the freezer the previous night and keep it in the fridge. Remove the dough 15 minutes before and then use it by pressing the dough lightly on a lightly floured work surface with a rolling pin and then into the required shape and thickness.

My Notes
Most Important - If you are wearing rings on your fingers or bangles on your hand, take them off before you start working with dough. These will invariably tear the dough. If the butter comes out, patching it up by dusting with flour does not always work and you will loose the desired layers of the final product.

The butter should be cold – cold enough that it is pliable enough to spread it.

See that the dough and butter inside it is cold. Once the butter starts melting, it is difficult to roll the dough and you will not get the dough to produce layers because the dough tends to absorb the butter. When rolling the dough, if at any point you feel the dough becoming warm and butter soft, put it back in the fridge immediately.

During the lamination of the dough (rolling and folding repeatedly), chill the dough. Resting and chilling the dough is an important part of making process.

You also need a lot of patience and delicate handling of the dough. Use just enough / light pressure to stretch it and roll the dough. The rolled out dough before shaping should be 1/4” thick.

This the  Petits Pain au Chocolat - Mini Chocolate Croissant that I made will update the post when I publish the next post with the remaining dough...

Labels : Breads, Croissant