Week 15: Croissants

Pickled eggs, a bit fancy
Easter weekend, we were planning to have some very special houseguests. And as part of getting ready for the festivities, I wanted to make a batch of croissants because that's just how special these houseguests are. Nothing says "nice to see you again" like some laminated dough. The trouble with croissants, though, is that they will not be rushed. Unfortunately, I was up against the clock after having gotten sidetracked with some naturally colored pickled eggs (magenta! yellow! blue!) earlier in the week. Also, hooray for science!

Well-proportioned butter
At any rate, I turned to my trusty Cook's Illustrated recipe for the croissants. The last time I made this, I had stocked up on some Plugra butter. I was able to find some WI European style cultured butter that boasted a whopping 87% butterfat content, leaving the Plugra (at 82%) in the dust. For those that don't know - butterfat content matters. The butter packet was a thing of beauty. The dough was also behaving relatively well. This being Friday night, however, I got a little behind on the clock and started cutting some corners. I can see Christopher Kimball shaking his head in judgement at my audacity. Specifically, I decided to skip the step of freezing the dough-butter packet before starting my first roll. Given the higher butterfat content than I was used to, the butter packet was already leaning towards more brittle. And, in hindsight, the dough really needed to be frozen so that the two components would roll together. Instead, I had some brittle butter layer breakage. Very sad. I gave the whole thing a couple extra turns to try and even it out, but the end result was definitely a more dense and less flaky croissant than what I'd hoped for. I also had less consistency with the batch - some looked great and others were obviously lacking in the flake department. I'm going to have to play around with these variables again and see if I can't get this to turn out with the super high butterfat butter.
Shaped and ready for a final rise

As it turned out, my houseguests weren't able to make it due to an unexpected illness for one of the kids. Puking and road trips do not go well together. My understanding is that there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth at the turn of events. I think the kids were sad, too. So we made the best of it and went out to a secret/not-so-secret bar with some friends. We also cooked up the kalua pork anyhow and wrangled an invitation to Easter dinner at another good friend's gathering. Packed everything up and brought it over for the masses to enjoy. We'll just have to have tiki Easter with croissants and lamb butter sculptures another year.

Fresh hot croissants!
This is a fine looking specimen
This is a slightly less fine looking specimen
Some flake, but a bit dense

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