This weekend, I challenged myself: to make the great classics of French Viennese pastries. In other words, croissants & pains au chocolat! Thanks to William and his clear explanations available on his blog, I decided to try!
This is my first trial so please be lenient with the final result ;)
It takes some times to get the result! There are several break times to abide by. The steps of the recipe are quite simple and you won’t need any specific equipment. And also the final result is really great, that’s why this recipe is a good one!
I will start by explaining you how you can make the puff pastry. And then you will find 2 more articles with details about “croissants” and “pains au chocolat”.
The basic ingredients are really easy to get! You will need:
- 250g flour
- 125g milk
- 125g butter
- 25g sugar
- 5g salt
- 10g yeast
Make the basic pastry
In a salad bowl, mix the sugar and the yeast with the slightly warmed milk. Mix for 2 minutes.
Then add the flour mixed with the salt and mix everything. Knead for 7 minutes.
As William said, the dough must be soft and elastic and should come off easily from the sides of the salad bowl. Fortunately that is exactly what I got, which motivated me to proceed with the recipe!
Then let the dough rest for 2H, covered with a dishcloth. The dough must triple in size!
How to prepare the puff pastry
Put the dough on your worktop slightly floured. Slightly press the dough with your fingers to “collapse” it.
Use a rolling pin to roll the 125g of cold butter out.This is not easy but it’s really important to keep the butter cold! You can wrap it into some parchment paper to make it easier.
Roll out the dough into a rectangle shape and put in the center of it the butter rectangle you made before.
Turn the borders of the dough down over the butter: start with top and bottom and finish with the sides. Here is a great dough roll!
Make into puff
Listen carefully: these steps must be done 3 times!
1.Roll out the dough widthways until you get a rectangle shape.
Oh, first mistake, I pressed too much and then the butter started to leak!
2. Then fold the dough into a “wallet shape”: turn down the right third over the middle and then the left third on top of it.
3. Put aside the dough roll you get for 30 minutes in the fridge.
Repeat those 3 steps twice again. Be patient and don’t leave the dough less time in the fridge! We want to keep the butter very cold. That will give us some great puff dough.
TIPS AND TRICKS
Make the dough in a cool room in order to keep the butter as cold as you can!
Roll the dough out enough to get a fine puff. That was my problem here. It was hard for me to roll the dough out enough (too cold for my small muscles? ^^). Therefore, my puff was quite thick after the baking.
For the next parts of the recipe, please take a look at those articles about “croissants” and/or “pains au chocolat”.
See you soon!
Rose.
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