Croissants

One day last week, while on Facebook, Laurie mentioned that she might be making croissants this past weekend and wondered if anyone would join her. Now, I have always wanted to make them, but had only heard how hard they were to make. So, I said that I would join her. We decided on the recipe from Michel Roux and I am glad that I finally made them. Other than the time constraint to make them, they were fairly easy. I did stuff a few of them with chocolate chips and those were yummy, but I also liked the plain ones with a drizzle of honey! I will make these again and probably fill with some different things..like strawberry jam and cream cheese! Yum!

Croissant Dough
From: Michel Roux

2tsp of active yeast, I used 1 packet of yeast
350 ml milk,or 1 1/2 cups--next time I will warm just a little
3 1/2 cups all purpose flour, divided
1 tsp salt
1/4 cup sugar
2 1/2 sticks butter, cold but not too hard

Egg wash, 1 egg yolk mixed with 1 Tbsp milk

Dissolve the yeast in the milk. Combine 2 1/2 cups of flour, salt and sugar in a large bowl; then pour in the milk mixture, allow the mixture to rest for 30 minutes. Add the remaining flour and stir until it begins to pull away from the sides. Cover the bowl and leave it to rise in a warm place for an hour or until doubled in size. **If you have a stand mixer, you can mix it with the dough hook*
Punch down dough by flipping it over with your hand, but do not overwork it. (It is really wet and sticky) Cover the bowl again and refrigerate at least 4 hours or overnight. (I left mine overnight and it wasn't sticky at all the next morning)
Shape the butter into a flat 5x7 rectangle. **I put the butter in between to pieces of cling wrap and beat it and rolled it with my rolling pin! ha!**Punch down dough by flipping again and place on a lightly floured surface. Pat the dough into a rectangle and roll it out into a larger rectangle. Place the butter in the center of the dough and fold the corner flaps over to completely enclose the butter.Lightly flour the work surface, roll the dough out to a 24x12 inch rectangle. Fold in thirds, wrap in cling wrap and refrigerate 30 minutes.
Give the chilled dough a quarter turn, roll out the rectangle, fold into thirds again, wrap and refrigerate again for 30 minutes.Roll the dough in the opposite direction as before, fold into thirds again, wrap and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes but no more than 60.**This keeps the butter cold and gives croissant the flaky layers**
Lightly flour your work surface and roll the dough out to your rectangle, I rolled mine until it was about 1/4 inch thick. Cut this rectangle into thirds, long ways, so that you have 3 long strips. Cut the strips into squares, then the squares in half diagonally, this gives you the triangles. Make sure your surface is floured, or they will stick. :) Make a 1 cm cut in the middle of the bottom of the triangle. Pull the 2 base points to lightly separate and roll to form the crescent. I found that this did help it shape better, but you don't have to do this part. If you are going to fill them with anything, do it before you roll it.Put the croissants on a baking tray and lightly brush with the egg wash. Put the croissants in a warm place to rise for 2 hours, or until almost doubled.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees, brush croissants with egg wash again, and bake for 15-20 minutes. Mine baked in about 13 minutes because I didn't want them to get too brown.