Tartine Bakery Croisants

When I first looked at how to make Croissants it looked next to impossible, but Tartine's book lays it out really easily with amazing imagery to follow.

I will outline the recipe below but I really suggest you buy this book this is just a taster to the amazing bread and baked goods. I follow the sourdough recipe and its amazing.

Ingredients

milk whole 450g

leaven 300 g

poolish 400g

bread flour about 1000g

salt 28g

sugar 85g

active dry yeast 10g

Adding the butter

400g unsalted butter

1/2 cup flour

Egg Wash

2 large eggs

tablespoon of cream

Method

1. Have your poolish and leaven ready before you begin. (Do this the night before) If they float in water they are ready.

    

2. Mix the poolish and leaven into the milk at room temperature. Mix it all up. Then mix in the rest of the ingredients with your hands. Cover with a teatowel and let stand for half an hour. Give it a knead, and then cover and let ferment at room temperature for 1.5 hours, doing stretch and folds every half an hour. Stretch and fold is basically taking a corner of the dough, stretching and folding onto itself. Done once for each corner at a time.

3. Transfer the dough into a plastic bag, flatten it into a rectangle, and pop into the fridge for 2-3 hours.

4. Cut up the butter into square pieces and bash it up with a rolling pin along with the 1/2 cup of flour. Mold the butter and 1/2 cup of flour into an 8 x 12 inches rectangle. Do it quickly not letting the butter warm up too much. Put in the fridge.

5. Take out the dough from the fridge and roll out into a 12 x 20 inches rectangle. Take out the butter from the fridge and lay it horizontally on the dough. It should cover about 2/3 of the length of the dough. Fold the left and the right side of the dough as you would fold a letter. Turn the dough 90 degrees and roll it out into a rectangle measuring about 12 x 20 inches. Do the fold again, cover with saran wrap and refrigerate for 1 hour.

6. Take the dough out of the fridge, roll out to a 12 x 20 inch and do the fold again. Pop it back in the fridge for another hour before doing a final 3rd turn.

7. Pop the dough into the freezer for an hour or two. Take it out of the freezer and roll out on a flour-dusted surface. The dough should be about 1/2 inch thick. Then cut the dough into triangles (a little like pizza slices).

8. Roll the slices up so they look like croissants beginning with the widest side.

9. At this stage put your croissants on a tin lined with parchment paper and put them in the fridge overnight. This allows them to slowly rise and double in size.

10. In the morning take them out. Whisk the eggs and cream and brush the tops of the croissants.

11. Bake for 20-30 minutes until the tops are golden brown.

12. Enjoy! Yum!