Plain and Almond filled buttery lovliness.. Croissants!

Did you know croissants were not invented in France?!?!? Instead, it was invented by a Polish baker who lived in Vienna! That's not to say the French have not perfected this buttery beauty!! I'm totally not taking that away from them at all! Some of the best croissants I have had were in Paris.. Nice and fresh and yummy and chocolatey!! Yup! The magic word is chocolate.. I can have it morning, noon, midday, night, midnight.. it doesn't matter... its a girl's bestest buddy. :-)

This dough is not the easiest to work with.  It has to be cool in order to cut, shape and form.  Once it is cool though, you are golden!  To start, you will roll out your dough, making it big enough to use your croissant cutter:

Once cut, your dough will look a little something like this:

If the dough has softened after you have cut it, as mine did, place it on a sheet pan with parchment paper and put them in the cooler for about 20 minutes or so.  You then want to take each individual piece and elongate it by flapping it and stretching in out. It will actually look a little something like the Eiffel tower, go figure!!

The picture to the top left is what your dough will look like after you stretch it out,  if you are not filling the croissant. The dough to the right is filled with an almond cream. As you can see, only a small portion of filling is placed on the dough. You then fold up the two bottom pieces and roll the doll all the way to the top, making sure the tip of the dough is on the bottom of your created croissant.  Unfilled croissants are shaped in a crescent form and the filled doughs remain rolled as seen below:

Unfilled Crescent shape

Filled, rolled out shape   

Here is the pic of Chef showing us how to fill the dough after stretching it out correctly:

Once you have shaped all of your dough, you will then proof these until they double in size. You don't need to proof for too long.  Once they have doubled, you will egg wash them and bake!  If you are making the almond cream filled croissants, then you will egg wash, place sliced almonds on the outside and bake! :) Here is the result:

Not filled

Almond Filled





There you have it my friends!  Croissants are time consuming. For them to come out looking beautiful, you have to take your time in stretching them out correctly, filling, rolling, shaping and placing them on your sheet pan.  But the result is to die for! These just melt in your mouth. I have officially made sure that i only eat ONE!!  Yup, you read that correctly. Although these things are amazing, I know what they are made of! And just so you know what they are made of too, here is the recipe!

Ingredients:

1 lb 8 oz of MILK

1.50 oz FRESH YEAST

2 lbs 10 oz BREAD FLOUR

.75 oz of SALT

1.50 oz of SUGAR

4.5 oz of BUTTER

Pack

1 lb 8 oz of BUTTER

Please take a look at yesterdays blog on how to create and roll out the dough.

I hope you enjoyed the pictures and that you have the WANT to go out, buy the ingredients, and roll your way into buttery heaven!

Hasta domani!! That's Spanish and Italian for See ya tomorrow!! ;)