{"id":487,"date":"2017-09-11T13:30:35","date_gmt":"2017-09-11T13:30:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.giacomomiceli.com\/blog\/?p=487"},"modified":"2018-04-22T19:09:46","modified_gmt":"2018-04-22T19:09:46","slug":"french-croissant-recipe-will-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jamez.it\/blog\/2017\/09\/11\/french-croissant-recipe-will-work\/","title":{"rendered":"A French croissant recipe that will work"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>French croissants are tough to master. The other day I was at my favorite pizza place, discussing with the pizza man the science of dough preparation. I casually mentioned that I was finally satisfied with my croissant-dough and the guy looked at me in disbelief.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Making pizza dough is a walk in the park compared to croissant dough!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>He doesn&#8217;t know that, but he made my day with that sentence. It is true that in the preparation of croissants there are more things that can go wrong. Sadly, there&#8217;s no better way to learn it than doing it yourself, since croissant-making will be greatly influenced by things you cannot change if you work from an ordinary kitchen: temperature and humidity of the ambient; flour readily available in your country; kind of butter and yeast.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m not going to detail the procedure here\u00a0since I don&#8217;t particularly innovate on the standard method of the butter square and the three\/six folds. This is just about the proportions of ingredients that I found working very well for me, and a list of things that can go wrong (and how to avoid it).<\/p>\n<p><strong>Ingredients:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>500g of flour &#8211; the most common one you find with no added yeast<br \/>\n25g of fresh yeast<br \/>\n10g of salt<br \/>\n60g of sugar<br \/>\n50g of butter for the dough<br \/>\n250g of water<br \/>\n50g of milk<br \/>\na tablespoon of gluten<br \/>\na tablespoon of powder milk<\/p>\n<p>200g of butter for the beurrage<\/p>\n<p>1 egg and a bit of cane sugar for the egg-wash before placing in the oven<\/p>\n<p><strong>List of things that can go wrong:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>If the dough doesn&#8217;t grow one of these things might have happened:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>you used dry yeast instead of fresh one. Still possible to do it, but you must put extra care in the mixing phase, spreading the yeast evenly;<\/li>\n<li>you killed your yeast by microwaving it with milk for too long &#8211; been there, done that;<\/li>\n<li>your fresh yeast is dead. It has a surprisingly short shelf life, even when preserved properly in a fridge.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If your butter breaks in smaller pieces while rolling:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>either you applied too much strength while rolling (it&#8217;s supposed to be a gentle massage at the beginning) or<\/li>\n<li>your butter was too cold, ie: not the same consistency of your dough.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If your butter is exposed while rolling:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>either your layer of dough was too thin, or<\/li>\n<li>the temperature of your butter\u00a0not cold enough.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If your butter melts and comes out of the croissant while heating:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>you could have used too much butter. Or you might have an<\/li>\n<li>uneven distribution of butter. If it&#8217;s concentrated close to the seams, it will leak more copiously.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If your croissant flattens while proofing (final fermentation):<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>make sure you are letting your croissant grow in an open environment (and not, for instance, inside your oven);<\/li>\n<li>make sure that the temperature of the room where they are growing is not over 22\u00b0C. If you are in a warmer climate, work at night;<\/li>\n<li>if you proofed your croissant covered in plastic wrap, next time try to leave the uncovered. This is the one occasion in which you do want that little crust!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<figure id=\"attachment_542\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-542\" style=\"width: 909px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-542\" src=\"http:\/\/www.giacomomiceli.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/170907_8462.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"909\" height=\"606\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-542\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The chocolaty brother, monsieur pain au chocolat.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>French croissants are tough to master. The other day I was at my favorite pizza place, discussing with the pizza man the science of dough preparation. I casually mentioned that I was finally satisfied with my croissant-dough and the guy looked at me in disbelief. &#8220;Making pizza dough is a walk in the park compared &#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"understrap-read-more-link button button-black\" href=\"https:\/\/jamez.it\/blog\/2017\/09\/11\/french-croissant-recipe-will-work\/\">Continue Reading &rarr;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":541,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[8,78,28],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jamez.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jamez.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jamez.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jamez.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jamez.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=487"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/jamez.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":543,"href":"https:\/\/jamez.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487\/revisions\/543"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jamez.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jamez.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jamez.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jamez.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}