This Surprisingly Easy Recipe Will Transport You to a French Bakery (2024)

FAQs

Is it hard to make a croissant? ›

Making croissants can look simple but somehow it is very difficult as all little mistakes will show up in the final result. There is no substitute for practice and experience. Before you start we can recommend watching our croissant making video to get a general feel for the recipe.

Notable is that French cakes tend to be low on sugar and rarely iced.

Refrigerate overnight; the dough will rise a little more in the fridge. Make the butter block: Cut the butter into a few large pieces and sprinkle with a teaspoon of flour. Begin pounding the butter with a French rolling pin to soften it, sprinkling flour on your rolling pin as needed.

The proofing should take about 2 hours. You should be able to tell if they are ready by carefully shaking the baking sheet and see if the croissants slightly wiggle. You should also be able to see the layers of dough when looking at your croissants from the side.

"A perfect croissant, it's a very crispy croissant with a lot of puff pastry, and it smells a good taste of butter inside," Duchêne says. "A bad croissant is very soft, like a brioche, and you can't have a very good smell of butter, it's not creamy inside. "It takes a lot of time and process to make a good croissant."

All that aside, a croissant, properly made, has a thin crisp shell surrounding a flaky buttery, multilayered, and soft interior with each layer softer than the one surrounding it.

Upon finishing a meal, the French tend to end on a high note—that is, with a dessert, digestif, and/or simple coffee. For lighter lunches, a small cookie or piece of chocolate with an espresso will do the trick, though for dinner, we recommend indulging a bit heavier on the dessert.

In France, we eat desserts on a daily basis, and they are very often enjoyed as a part of our meals. Of course, the frequency of dessert consumption can vary among individuals, preferences and dietary habits, but it is safe to say that it is very common to have a small serving of dessert at the end of lunch and dinner.

Traditionally during a French dinner, cheese is served after the main course and before the dessert. You may notice that restaurants will often offer on the menu a plate of cheese in or just before the dessert section.

First and foremost, you should use European or European-style butter which consists of 83% to 84% of butterfat. It should be 68° Fahrenheit and in the consistency of cream cheese, spreadable with a spatula.

Do you need to let croissant dough rest overnight? ›

Long rest: Place the folded dough on the lined baking sheet, cover with plastic wrap or aluminum foil, and refrigerate for 4 hours or overnight. (Up to 24 hours is ok.)

Simple: plastic-wrap the just mixed dough on a tray, rest at room temp for 1 hour and refrigerate overnight. It will prove somewhat while in the refrigerator. In the morning: Roll and laminate with your butter block as per your recipe instructions.

A classic French croissant has 55 layers (27 layers of butter), achieved with a French fold followed by 3 letter folds. Less layers will mean a different texture (less tender, more chewy, with more defined layers). Too many layers bring a risk of the butter getting too thin and melting into the dough.

Help, butter leaks out when baking!

Your croissants were probably under-proofed. Just let them proof a bit longer so they get wobbly and increase visually in size. When under-proofed the butter tends to leak out from in between the layers and you end up with a butter puddle.

Crescent rolls have a similar crescent-moon shape as croissants, but most aspects of these baked goods are different. Unlike croissants, crescent rolls are not laminated. This makes crescent rolls more bread-like than croissants.

Croissants. Croissants are notoriously difficult to make because they require a lot of time, patience, and attention to detail. The dough needs to be laminated with butter, rolled out and folded multiple times to create the flaky layers. Any mistake in the process can result in tough or flat croissants.

May contain saturated fat and trans fat

Furthermore, some research suggests that eating foods that are highly processed and rich in both saturated fats and simple carbohydrates, such as croissants, may harm heart health. Therefore, some people may need to moderate their intake ( 22 ).

While both puff pastry and croissant doughs are laminated, puff pastry does not include yeast and croissant dough does. The yeast gives the dough an even lighter texture. Croissant doughs also contain more sugar than puff pastry.

By law, only a croissant made with 100% pure butter can wear a straight shape as a badge of honor. A croissant made with any other fat, such as margarine or (sacrebleu!) oil, must disclose its impurity with a curved shape.