The croissant is one of the most consumed pieces of pastries in the world. Its crispy texture, its particular flavor between sweet and salty and the powerful aroma of butter have turned the croissant into a very precious snack in any corner of the planet.
You may think that it is a little madness to get caught up in the task of preparing homemade croissants, but the pleasure of taking these wonderful bites out of the oven makes it worth the work they carry. It only takes time, patience and a tad of skill. Come on, we'll explain how to get it.
Ingredients
For 15 units
Force flour
500 g
Sugar
75 g
Egg
2
Butter
250 g
Compressed yeast
25 g
Salt
5 g
Water
75 ml
Whole milk
75 ml
The croissants are made based on a puff pastry recipe with yeast. So we will combine the puff pastry, they already know a mass of flour and butter, with a dough enriched with eggs and yeast mainly.
How to make yeast dough with yeast
We sift the flour and form two volcanoes, one with a quarter of the flour that we mix with the yeast and warm water, forming a ball that we leave to ferment in a bowl of water until a sponge forms.
In the large volcano we add the rest of the ingredients except 200 grams of butter that will be to turn the puff pastry. We begin to mix these ingredients and add the sponge. We knead the dough well for about 10 minutes, it must be an elastic mass, slightly moist and it will detach from the table and from the hands.
We make two cross cuts and let it rest about 10 minutes. We went to stretch in the form of a four-pointed star, leaving the center somewhat thicker. Add the 200 grams of butter, which we have worked softening it into a thick sheet and then cool it again, although not at all, only slightly. We close the dough as if it were an envelope, first the tips that have remained in vertical position and then those that have remained horizontal.
With a good roll we crush the dough and we stretch it leaving it three times longer than it is wide. Then we fold the dough on itself, first one point towards something more of the center and then the other point above a little above the first and we stretch again in the same way, doing this once or twice more.
How to make homemade croissants
If we have put the dough in the fridge we will have to do the same process of folding and kneading twice more. And we went to stretch the plastón. We will give it a size of about 40 cm in width so it is long.
Divide the dough, cutting it with a sprig, into two halves. And we will make triangles about 8 cm in base. If we want to make small croissant we will cut the mass longitudinally in 3 and we will give a cut to the triangles of about 5 cm of base.
To the base of the triangle we give a cut of about 2 cm opening it slightly. We roll them from the base to the tip and at the same time we will enlarge it slightly obtaining cylinders about 10 to 12 cm wide (of the initial 8).
We place the cylinders in oven plates. The tip should be on the bottom and we give the shape of horns pressing them to the plate or leave them in Parisian shape. We moisturize them slightly leaving them to rest until they double the size.
We paint with egg and introduce it in the oven at about 225 ºC for about 10 to 15 minutes. When removing them you can polish with syrup or sprinkle with icing sugar.