Croissants

by: Pat Man Kitchen

Few pastries are as satisfying as a buttery croissant. When well made, with authentic croissant dough, a croissant is rich and buttery like good brioche and flaky and light like the best puff pastry. Real croissants - not the breadlike kind found at the corner deli, which are more often than not made with margarine - are made from a kind of layered dough made by folding butter between sheets of yeast-leavened bread dough. When you pull apart a croissant, it should unravel in spirals off laky buttery bread. Once you've made the croissant dough, you've done most of the work andfinished most of the tricky parts, but there are still a few things to watch out for. Once you shape the croissants, they must proof either for a couple of hours at room temperature or less in a warm place, on ideally in the refrigeratorfor about 12 hours where they'll develop a better flavor because of the slow rising time. If you're letting the croissants proof in a warm place, it should still never be warmer than 85°F or the butter will melt - you'll see it oozing out onto the sheet pan - and the separation of the layers will be lost. If you want to fill the croissants with chocolate or savory ingredients such as ham or cheese, just roll pieces of the ingredients in regular croissants or into rectangular-shaped croissants. The trick to making croissants is to time them so theyre ready in the morning, not at some hour of the night when they happened to rise to just the right degree. The best solution is to make and shape the croissants the night before and then let them rise in the refrigerator. The slow rising will actually improve their flavor. If your refrigerator is on the cold side, you may find that the croissants haven't risen. Take them out and let them rise in a relatively warm place, but no warmer than 85°F.