Crisp, flaky, and filled with rich buttery goodness, a homemade croissant one of the most blissful things you can treat yourself to, any time, any day.
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00:00Hey everyone, it's T.A. in the Delish Kitchen Studios.
00:03I'm here to show you the art of making croissants.
00:06Croissants might seem like something that's such a mammoth beat that no home cook should
00:13attempt them or could ever achieve them, but honestly, anyone can make croissants.
00:19If you work through the four steps systematically, the dough, the butter block, the lamination,
00:26and the proof and bake, you're going to be just fine and you're going to come out with something
00:31so gorgeous and delicious that anyone who's lucky to eat them is going to be so impressed.
00:38Let's get started. We're going to start by making our dough, also known in French as the de trompe.
00:45Okay, it's just the dough. We're going to start with our water
00:52and our milk. It's very important to weigh all of your ingredients.
00:56Also, something to say is that you want the liquids to be at room temperature.
01:01We're going to add our yeast to them and our yeast needs to live for a long time
01:07and we're just going to give it a little whisk to dissolve it. We're not going to let it bloom.
01:11Bread flour is very important to croissant making.
01:15It has a higher protein content than all-purpose flour.
01:18A little bit of sugar on top. Sugar is going to give that dough just a little tiny sweetness.
01:23It's going to help with the color. It is not going to make the dough sweet though.
01:27Salt is very important as well. If you don't add the salt, your yeast will not work in the same way.
01:35We are going to add just a little bit of softened butter.
01:39We're going to mix this on low for just a minute until most of the flour is incorporated.
01:43And then we're going to kick it up to like medium, medium high and let it go for four to five minutes.
01:55All right, we are good to go at this point. The dough is smooth and stretchy and elastic.
02:03It might still look like it's tearing slightly. That's fine. That's what we want at this point.
02:10Into a greased bowl. Little bread baby. And cover it with plastic wrap.
02:16Or you could also use a kitchen towel, to be honest. Just as long as the top doesn't dry out.
02:22Our dough has been resting at room temp for like about an hour. And that's just giving the yeast a
02:28little bit of time to work in an unshilled environment. Because when you put yeast in the
02:34fridge, it slows it down. At this point, we are now ready to put it in the fridge. And before we do that,
02:41we want to get it in the form that we need it in for when we enrobe later. Add some flour. We're
02:50going to get this dough out onto the flour. And we are going to very gently roll it out into a 12 by
02:5812 square. The dough should be pretty elastic at this point. It should not resist you too much.
03:04The reason why we want to get it into the shape that it needs to be in now is because now is when
03:09it's at its most flexible and malleable. And now we're just going to put it in plastic wrap. It is
03:14very important that this plastic wrap is absolutely encasing this. It must be airtight. If air gets in,
03:22it will dry out and it will not work properly, essentially. Now, very important. You cannot put
03:29this dough on the fridge shelf or even on a baking sheet to put it in the fridge. Those two surfaces
03:37are going to get too cold. The metal is going to conduct the chill of the refrigerator. The shelf
03:42itself is going to be too cold. I recommend a wooden cutting board, which is my favorite thing to use.
03:49You can also use a plastic cutting board. We're going to get this into the fridge for 4 to 12 hours
03:55and then we'll be ready to work with it again. Now we're going to make our barrage or our butter block.
04:03This is the layer of butter that we are going to fold into the dough and is going to be the starting
04:09point with our lamination. The ideal percentage of butter for this is 83% or higher. So that's a
04:19European style of butter. It's a higher butterfat percentage than American style butter. And that's
04:27very important because it helps the butter to be more malleable and flexible so that it will roll
04:35out easier during lamination. We are going to start by getting our butter going just on low until it's
04:41partially broken down before we add our flour. At this point, the butter is broken down and we're
04:47just going to add our flour. We are going to paddle this until it is absolutely smooth. There should be
04:54no lumps of butter visible. If at any point the butter starts to look greasy or look like it's melting,
05:02take the bowl out and throw it in the fridge. So now our butter is completely smooth. It's time to
05:07form it into the butter block. Much like the dough that we got into the 12 inch square, we want to get
05:14this butter into a very specific dimension of square before we chill it down. So I have here just a
05:21standard piece of parchment paper that I have folded so it makes an 8 by 8 inch packet. All of the butter
05:28is going to go right in the middle.
05:39So this is the 8 by 8 packet and it's not even yet. You do want to get the butter as even as possible.
05:48So at this point our butter is in a nice flat even layer. We're going to get it into the fridge for about
05:5320 to 30 minutes or until it is 60 degrees when we hold a thermometer up to it.
06:01Our dough has been chilling overnight so it's nice and soft and pillowy and it's temping right now
06:10at about 60 degrees and that's the perfect temp to enrobe the butter. We also have our butter that has been
06:17chilling for about 20 minutes ish and it is now at 60 degrees. I cannot stress enough how important it is
06:25to have both of them around 60 degrees otherwise this step really won't work. We're going to enrobe
06:31our dough. So basically enroving is when you put the butter block in the croissant dough and fold it
06:39together. So I usually like to execute what I call the grand flip which goes like this
06:43just like that. Yep still in our 12 by 12 and then I'm going to unwrap the butter. The butter is also going to be sticky
06:53so I recommend touching the butter as little as possible and I'm going to arrange this like a diamond
07:02in the center of the square. This is going to ensure when we fold it all together
07:09that we get an even layer of dough and butter. I want the butter and the dough to be even all the way
07:17around. So to enrobe we're just going to fold over. It's almost like you're creating an envelope in a
07:25different way. It's like a greeting card kind of vibe and then you just fold the flap closed and now we're
07:31going to just pinch everything together. You can sprinkle more flour that is totally fine and you just want
07:37the ends to meet up kind of like a pair of lips all the way around. Now that we have got it together
07:45I like to flip it over just like this. Now it's time to roll out and this is where you want to be
07:51at your most careful because the butter is at its thickest point and it is most liable to break here.
08:00If you press too hard or go too fast at this stage you are just going to break the butter block in half
08:06which I have done many times okay. Everybody does it but that will affect your lamination.
08:13Lamination is important because it is the single thing that makes these croissants rise and creates
08:21those gorgeous layers. So I'm going to roll the dough out until it is 24 inches long maintaining about
08:28an 8 inch width. And as I go I like to feel it. You can feel if the butter block is breaking. You can
08:36feel if it's smooth. You really want to work quickly because you don't want your butter to melt. You want
08:40to think about pushing the dough away from you as opposed to pressing down because the pressing down
08:45will break the butter.
08:46We're at 24 inches now so it's time to do our first turn. We are going to now be laminating the dough.
08:59Laminating is the fancy term for getting layers of dough butter dough butter dough butter by a series of
09:06turns or folds. When you put a pastry in the oven with lamination the heat of the oven melts the butter.
09:13The water in the butter converts to steam and that raises the pastry. Before we do our double turn
09:21we are going to just trim the very ends. Double turn I like to describe as basically just closing a book.
09:30So you are going to start by taking the bottom and taking it up to meet the middle just like this.
09:37And then the top
09:42is going to fold down and meet that. They should be about even so if they're not you can just even
09:47them out. And at all points in this process you want it to be as square as possible. So I'm tucking
09:54in these edges and making it even. So right now we have two layers. Two layers of dough. And now we're
10:01going to make it four because I'm going to fold the top down over the bottom again. Et voila book turn.
10:06You've enrobed. You've done your first turn. We are now going to put this in plastic wrap.
10:13We're going to go back on the wood board and we're going to go back into the fridge for an hour.
10:17And that's going to let the dough relax because we've worked to the gluten in the flour and it's
10:22going to get cold again so that our butter doesn't melt when we do our next turn.
10:26Our dough has been chilling now for an hour so it's time for our letter turn. We are going to
10:34position our dough so the foldy end which you can see right here is toward us or away from us. Just
10:43not like this. You want like this so that you can roll out in a different direction than you did before.
10:51And here we go. We are now going to roll this out to get it 24 again and 8. As I'm rolling this out
10:59I'm seeing a couple of butter lumps and you might see them. They're like little like coins of yellow
11:08that are a little bit extra hard. That is not ideal. However, as I said before, there's no such thing as
11:16perfect. We're just going to trim off the edges like we did before again just to help the lamination
11:22be more even. Now you may be like looking at these trimmings going, can I save them? There's really not
11:28much butter that's at the ends so they're not really that tasty. Letter turn time. Letter turn or single
11:34turn. Basically you're just going to take the top layer down and bring it down so it's about a third of
11:41the way like that. You just want to get three layers of the dough butter just like that. Again nice and
11:50square. So at this point we are going to put the dough back into the refrigerator for two to four
11:55hours and that is so that the gluten has time to completely relax itself. So the croissant dough has
12:04been resting in the refrigerator for two hours and now it's time to do our final rollout and our cutting and
12:11shaping of our croissants. This is a very exciting part for me. We are going to be rolling out our
12:16croissant dough slightly differently than the last couple times. When we've done our folds we've rolled
12:22it out straight like this. We're going to be rolling it out like this. It's easier to cut. So because of that
12:30these folded sides are actually going to go to the side this time. A little bit more flour. Now we're
12:36going to roll this out to about 30 inches which sounds crazy I know. If you feel it sticking flip
12:48it over give that top part of flour and then roll from that side. If it sticks you risk tearing your
12:56dough and providing the butter an extra avenue to leak out. You want your dough to be about 10 inches wide
13:06so you can be checking as you go along because if it is wider than that it will be harder to get it to the 30 inches.
13:12Our dough is rolled out to 30 by 10. You'll notice that it's not completely even on the edges and that's okay.
13:20We are again going to even them out. This part can seem confusing but when you see it done it makes a lot of sense.
13:28Basically we are shooting to get a bunch of very long and narrow triangles that we are then going
13:36to roll into our croissants. The way that I like to do that is I like to measure every four inches
13:45on the bottom side and every two inches on the top side and then I like to zigzag my pizza wheel to get
13:53those shapes. We are going to go to four and then to four. Now at the top two inches tick and now from
14:06the two inch we go four. We are going to start at the top and that first mark that we made two inches
14:15in we are going to go straight from that down to the edge. Now we're going to go from this bottom.
14:22First notch in four inches in we're going to go from the four inch notch to the top point okay
14:30et voila first triangle we're going to put that down. Now we're going to come up to the top see this
14:35notch here. We're going to go from this notch to the bottom point like that and now from the next
14:43notch all the way up to the top. Before you start actual shaping though I recommend taking about half
14:53of these putting them on a cutting board covering them loosely with plastic wrap and putting them in
14:59the fridge to shape. You're going to start with one triangle. You're going to hold it up in the air in
15:05front of you and let the gravity do the work. Slowly pull it down just like that. It should be about 14
15:14inches long. Yes you should use a ruler and measure. I mean you've been using the ruler this whole time
15:20why stop now? So here we go. I need just a little bit longer.
15:26Once you've got it that long you are going to take the top. I call it the top. It's that very short end
15:35and slowly roll and just keep rolling. This is the cool part because look it looks like a croissant.
15:45It's so cool. I get excited every time. Parchment lined sheet tray goes down. You see this point?
15:51This goes underneath. Okay? If it's not underneath it'll pop up when the croissant's baking and we
15:57don't want that. And now we're just going to do the same thing with all of these. So at this point
16:04our croissants are beautifully shaped. We're going to let these now proof covered loosely with plastic wrap
16:12until they are very puffy and this is going to take probably about two hours. You can speed the process up
16:19a little bit if you do the oven proofing method. And the oven proofing method essentially involves
16:26a pan of steaming hot water in the bottom of your oven to raise the humidity and also the temperature
16:34of the oven and convert it into a proof box. Our croissants have been proofing for two hours. They are
16:41very wiggly jiggly and poofy. Before we bake, we're going to egg wash. So here I have one egg
16:48that has been strained. Usually I do not advocate for straining egg wash. However, in this case I
16:55really found it key to avoiding that clumpiness of egg that you can sometimes get in egg wash.
17:00We are just going to gently brush each one all over. You want it to be even. It really does help with the
17:09color. At this point, they're ready to bake. Put the racks in the lower and upper thirds of the oven
17:16and make sure to swap them after they've been baking for 15 minutes. They should bake for 20 to 23
17:23minutes total. I would not suggest opening your oven door during that first 15 minutes of baking.
17:30Look at these babies!
17:32It is such a proud moment. I hope when you make them, you feel the same sense of accomplishment that
17:40I always do whenever I pull them out of the oven. The smell is just incredible. It's like all you smell
17:48is butter. It's so amazing. I cannot wait to dig in.
17:58Yes. And the most rewarding moment, well other than eating it, is when you look and you see the spiral.
18:05That perfect, perfect swirl.
18:10Mmm. It's so flaky and buttery. It's not an easy process. There are lots of
18:17spots along the way where things can go not as ideally as you want to. But if you attempt this,
18:24I promise it will be one of the most rewarding things you've ever done. It teaches you perseverance.
18:30It teaches you patience. And most of all, it teaches you to just really enjoy the process. For me,
18:38croissants is as much about the process as it is about the delicious thing that you end up with it
18:44at the end of the line, you know? So for this and other baking projects, stick around on Delish.com.