Baking croissants and pain au chocolat

Handmade croissants are lovely, the process of making is lengthy but worth it! What you need:

• 350g strong bread flour

• 35g golden caster sugar

• 7g yeast

• 7g salt

• 200ml water

• 1 egg, beat for the glazing before baking

• Chocolate preferably dark if making pain au chocolat

Preparing the dough, first mix the dry ingredients in large ceramic mixing bowl, I then made a hole in the centre of mixture and poured in about 150ml of the water and slowly folded in the dry ingredients to the water, this taking a minute or two, then add the remaining water continued to fold the mixture for several minutes until a dough is formed.

Dough after water folded in

After all the water has been folded into the dough, the dough can be placed on a lightly floured surface and kneaded for about ten minutes. After this the dough was formed into a ball and placed in large bowl. I used a steel mixing bowl which is then covered with cling film and allowed to rest for about two hours.

Dough pre-rise

After an hour, I removed the dough from the bowl, kneaded it for a couple of minutes to remove the air, reformed back into a ball - then back in the bowl cover with cling film and placed in the fridge for two hours. A the the end of this the dough will have about double in size as you can see in the picture below.

Dough post-rise

The next stage is to add the butter to the dough. To do this the dough is rolled out into a rectangle approx 40 × 20 cm.

Dough flatten out

Now I prepare the butter which is added as a layer to the dough, slightly small in size about 25-28 × 20 cm. The butter does need to be cold from the fridge, the way I do this if to place between two sheets of baking parchment and use a rolling pin to flatten, then place on the dough.

Butter layer added to dough

Now I fold the top part of dough, the part without butter over the first third of the dough with the butter, then the lower third of the butter over the top of the dough just folded down. So at this time you have three layers of dough and two layers of butter.

Folded dough

I cover the dough in cling film place back into fridge for two hours. The dough is then removed from the fridge, rollback back into 40 × 20 cm rectangle, folded as earlier, re-wrapped in cling film, then back to the fridge for just an hour or so. This then is done three additional times, so creating multiple alternating layers of dough and butter. When this is completed, it is back to the fridge for the dough wrapped in cling film overnight.

In the morning the dough was taken from the fridge and rolled into a rectangle about 50 × 25 cm, 5-6 mm thick - finally :) the making of the croissants and pain au chocolat. The croissants are made by cutting the dough into triangles then rolling. While the pain chocolat by cutting a rectangle shaped section of the dough, then placement lines of chocolate then rolling the dough over, I do three lines of chocolate. The newly formed croissants are place on a backing tray, covered in a proving bag and allowed to rise for a couple of hours. Just before baking used a fine brush to coat the croissants with beaten egg, this when baked gives a shine to the pastries,

Pain au chocolat just before baking

Then after baking we have the finished pastries

Baked croissants

There is a lot of effort that goes into making these but I think it is worth it - nothing a freshly baked croissants or pain au chocolat with morning coffee

Croissants and coffee

A big thank you to the person who made the excellent suggestion of dark orange chocolate for the pain au chocolat which worked so amazingly well.