22 Nov 2011

Croissants

 I have wanted to make my own croissants since I saw them being made on the Great British Bake Off but never got round to it until now.  I thought they would be really difficult and that mine would turn out as misshapen, stodgy croissant hybrids which I would be ashamed to say that I had made but, actually, though they took a long time to prepare, they were not as difficult as I thought they would be.

I used Paul Hollywood's recipe for croissants from his book '100 Great Breads' since I knew it would be a recipe that I could trust not to lead me too far astray and in honour of the GBBO since it is what inspired me into making them in the first place.

It took me about 5 hours on the first day of making them just to get the dough ready since, after it had been mixed it had to be left in the fridge for an hour, then be rolled out, have the butter folded into it, then be left in the fridge for an hour again, then rolled and folded again, and the same again several times.  I had to keep getting up every hour to roll it out which made my evening rather less than restful.  Anyway, when it was ready and had been left in the fridge overnight I rolled it out into a very thin dough, a process which I can understand why they get machines to do these days, then I cut it into squares, cut the squares in half diagonally into triangles, then rolled them into croissant shapes.  This is what my uncooked croissants looked like - not too awful.


I then glazed them with egg and cooked them in the oven and this is what they looked like when I took them out.


So they may not be the most uniform and beautiful croissants you have ever seen but I was very pleased with them since they were my first ever attempt and they were not heavy and stodgy like I thought they would be but were crispy and buttery with a soft middle.

I got the recipe for these from Paul Hollywood's book but if you want to make these yourself then here is a link for the same recipe http://uktv.co.uk/food/recipe/aid/514811

8 comments:

  1. These look great, I really want to try baking some but the sheer amount of butter really scares me! Maybe I can scale the recipe down and just make 2 or 3! LOL

    ReplyDelete
  2. I scaled the recipe down so I only made 12 and I fed a lot of them to my family, don't be frightened of butter, it is so yummy :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. These look AMAZING - you're too modest, they look like proper ones you'd get in a french bakery!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thanks Kerry, you're too kind, I am fairly pleased with them but I don't think they're quite up to french bakery standards

    ReplyDelete
  5. Noooo! You bought those! They look really good, I'm very impressed :-) And of course I'm a conoisseur after 5 years in France, I'd happily dunk one of those into my allonge!
    Pig x

    ReplyDelete
  6. I definitely made them, that is why I took a picture of them unbaked, to prove it, thankyou for the compliment though :)

    ReplyDelete
  7. I love baking croissants and it's been a long time since I did it. These are gorgeous! I love the headline photo. That's *exactly* what I want to do with a fresh croissant -- read a book and drink a cup of coffee. The only thing missing is the soft boiled egg for dunking!

    ReplyDelete
  8. Congratulations for your blog. Beautiful recipes and beautiful photographs.
    I will definetely give your croissants a go they look amazing!

    ReplyDelete