Bread Matters (32 page)

So why go on about them and suggest making them at home? Well, turning out your own hand-made croissants is a satisfying challenge for the home baker who wants to push the limits of yeast fermentation. But, just as important, if I am going to have an occasional indulgence I want it to be as good as it can be, and in this case that means made with proper butter and no additives.

The croissants and pains au chocolat that tempt us at every coffee shop and forecourt may well be made with combinations of fractionated butter, hydrogenated vegetable oils and various synthetic colours and flavours. Fractionated fats concentrate the highly saturated element from oils such as butter or palm; hydrogenation of oil creates trans-fatty acids, which are widely accepted as harmful to human health. Worse still, undeclared enzymes may be used to make the gluten in the dough more pliable and stretchy, in order to create thinner layers and a flakier structure.

One enzyme in particular is increasingly used in laminated doughs for croissants and Danish pastries. It is called transglutaminase. You won’t see this name on any ingredient list because enzymes are called ‘processing aids’ in food labelling law and do not have to be declared. Why might you like to know that your croissants were made with transglutaminase? Because a recent study has shown that this enzyme acts on the gliadin proteins in dough to generate the peptides responsible for triggering the coeliac response in susceptible people
¹
. The scientists who brought this disturbing possibility to public attention in late 2005 took the unusual step of making a recommendation to the food industry – that transglutaminase should not be used in baked products until further urgent research has been done to ascertain the extent of the risk to health. Whether this advice will be acted on by the food industry remains to be seen. If you are concerned, ask the supplier of your croissants whether they are made with transglutaminase. Don’t hold your breath while you wait for an answer.

In the meantime, as you can see, there is every reason to make your own croissants. All that’s needed is flour, milk, yeast, salt, ordinary dairy butter and absolutely no additives.

Croissants

Without the specially engineered fat and dough-modifying enzymes, you can’t expect to achieve the same exaggerated flakiness that is sometimes found in commercial croissants. But if you follow the method given below, you should be able to turn out light and delicious croissants.

A fairly high-protein strong flour is needed, although the ability to stretch without shrinking back is more important than absolute strength. In practice this means using a ‘strong breadmaking’ flour, but you might experiment by mixing in a small percentage of a lower-protein flour – perhaps French or Italian if you can get hold of it. In theory this should make the dough a bit more extensible.

In all stages of making croissants (except final proof) it is important to keep the raw materials as cold as possible. A marble worktop is ideal. If you have naturally warm hands, try to chill them in icy water just before you handle the dough.

Makes 16 croissants or pains au chocolat

Croissant dough

10g Fresh yeast

385g Milk (cold)

600g Strong white flour

5g Sea salt

1000g Total

250g Butter (slightly salted or unsalted)

Beaten egg for brushing

Dissolve the yeast in the cold milk. Make up a fairly stiff, stretchy dough with the flour, salt and yeast mixture. The texture of the dough must not be too soft or the butter will break through it during the folding and rolling process. Once the dough is developed to the right extent, put it in a polythene bag and into the refrigerator for a minimum of 30 minutes.

Dusting the worktop with light scatterings of flour as often as is necessary to stop things sticking, roll the dough out into a rectangle twice as long as it is wide and about 8mm thick. You now need to prepare a sheet of butter that will cover two-thirds of the dough. This can be done in two ways.

First, put the block of butter into a strong polythene bag and press down on it with a rolling pin, gradually changing to a rolling action as the butter gets thinner. The advantage of this method is that if the butter starts to melt, you can put the bag back in the fridge until it firms up again. The problem is getting the butter out of the bag on to the dough; this involves turning the bag inside out, preferably without touching the butter with your fingers.

Alternatively, cut slivers of butter about 2mm thick from the block and lay them over two-thirds of the dough. This is easier to control, but you may run out of slivers before you have covered the requisite area of dough and the end result will in any case not be quite as smooth a layer as with the bag method.

Once you have arranged the butter, fold the uncovered third of the dough over half the buttered part and the remaining buttered part back over the resulting sandwich. This will form a ‘billet’, or parcel, with alternating layers of dough-butter-dough-butter-dough. It is usual to keep a count of the number of fat layers: at this stage you have 2. Make sure that the edges are neatly aligned. Pinch the rims of the dough together to stop the butter slipping around when you roll the billet out.

Roll the dough out in the opposite direction to the first roll. You should aim to produce another rectangle about twice as long as it is wide. This time, instead of folding the dough in 3, do a ‘book turn’. Pick up the short edges of the dough and fold them inwards until they meet in the middle. Then fold the 2 ‘pages’ together as if you were closing a book. You have now got 8 fat layers. Put the dough back in its bag and into the fridge for at least half an hour and up to 2 hours. If you leave it for too long, there is a risk that the butter will go very hard and break up into flinty pieces when you next roll the dough. This can be remedied by allowing the dough to warm up a little before rolling. But the problem is usually to keep the dough cool enough to stop the butter melting. If it does, it will not form proper layers. The other reason for keeping the dough cold is to control the rate at which the yeast is fermenting: you don’t want it to be too lively at this stage because it is hard to create good dough-butter laminations with a puffy dough.

Roll the dough out again (in the opposite direction to the previous roll) and do another book turn. You now have 32 fat layers, which is the maximum desirable number for a croissant dough, according to the experts. Return the dough to the fridge for another half an hour or so to keep the butter firm.

The dough is now ready for its final roll. Roll it out to a thickness of about 5mm. Cut into equilateral triangles with sides measuring 10-12.5cm. You can, of course, make your croissants smaller or larger, as you wish. Before you commit yourself to cutting the dough, mark out the triangles (or squares for pains au chocolat) to make sure that you are going to get about the right number. Rest the cut pieces for a few minutes to allow the gluten to become more extensible. To make a croissant, proceed as follows:

Grasp the apex of the triangle with one hand and the base with the other. As gently as you can – without tearing the dough – stretch the triangle until it is almost twice as long (from base to apex) as it was. Pick up the base in both hands and stretch it slightly outwards. You should now have something resembling the Eiffel Tower. Fold the edge of the base firmly over on itself and then, with the fingers of your left hand, grasp the top of the tower but keep it close to the worktop. Gently pulling with the left hand, roll up the croissant towards the tip with the right hand, keeping it under slight tension as you roll. This helps to create further layers of dough; more importantly, by putting the gluten under some tension, it creates a structure that will prove up into a bold, lively and flaky croissant. Place on greased or parchment-lined baking trays in such a way that the tip of the croissant is held down under the weight of the body; if you leave it showing, it may unravel during proof or baking. Turn the ‘claws’ inwards slightly to form the classic croissant (crescent) shape.

Brush carefully with beaten egg, ensuring that there are no unsightly tide marks round the edges. Cover and set to prove in a place that is not so warm that there is any danger of the butter melting. If it does, you will see disappointing puddles of butter oozing from your croissants as they bake; and if the butter is visible, it certainly won’t be doing its job between the layers of dough.

After sufficient proof, the croissants should be appreciably bigger and the finger test will tell you that their structure has become puffy and decidedly fragile. Bake them in a fairly hot oven (200°C) for about 15 minutes, until they are golden brown.

Pains au chocolat

Only 30 years ago, Elizabeth David could write that
petit pain au chocolat
‘has never, so far as I know, crossed the Channel’
(English Bread and Yeast Cookery,
Allen Lane, 1977). Well it certainly has now. But the late, great Mrs David would be appalled at most of what passes for pain au chocolat in coffee shops and bake-off units the length and breadth of the UK. For one thing, she reckoned that they should not be made with a croissant dough at all; and she mourned the passing of the ‘crude, rather gritty chocolate of those days’. Sadly, she did not live to see the arrival of the new breed of dark organic chocolate, satisfyingly bitter and high in cocoa solids. This is the only kind of chocolate worth using in a home-made pain au chocolat.

If you, like I, disagree with Elizabeth David about not using croissant dough for pains au chocolat, here is how to do it. You can, of course, put a stick of chocolate in any dough of your choosing – and why not?

To make pains au chocolat, cut the prepared croissant dough not into triangles but into rectangles about 10 x 5cm. Place a generous stick of chocolate along one short edge and roll the dough up around it. Pinch the ends together to stop the chocolate flowing out during baking. Egg wash, prove and bake as for croissants.

Marzipan wheels

This is another way of using a croissant dough that enjoyed some popularity at the Village Bakery when I could get around to doing it. Adding something as rich as marzipan to a croissant dough is rather gilding the lily. But the same principle and method can be used with a savoury filling, such as olive tapenade or a vegetable pâté.

Makes 10 marzipan wheels

300g Croissant Dough (see page 283)

120g Marzipan (see page 266)

420g Total

Beaten egg, to glaze

Take the croissant dough through all the stages until it is ready to be cut into triangles. Cut off a piece weighing about 300g, which will be about a quarter of the total, and use this to make the marzipan wheels (the rest can be made into croissants or pains au chocolat). Ideally the piece will measure about 15 x 10cm, but if you need to adjust the dimensions, make sure that you do not roll it any thinner than 5mm. Dusting the worktop with a little flour, roll out the marzipan until it is almost the same size as the dough. Place it on top of the dough with just a little uncovered at the top edge. Fold this edge of dough over on to the marzipan and then roll the whole piece up towards you like a Swiss roll. Do this quite tightly and use your fingers to keep the marzipan in close contact with the dough. Keep the final seam underneath the body of the roll and press down and rock back and forth gently a couple of times to help it to seal.

With a bread knife, cut slices off this roll, about 1.5cm thick. Lay them flat on a baking tray lined with baking parchment, allowing enough space for them to expand laterally. Brush the wheels with beaten egg. Cover, prove for about an hour and then bake in a moderate oven (180°C) until golden brown. If the oven is too hot or you bake for too long, the sugars in the marzipan will burn. For a really porky finish, brush the wheels with a honey and cream glaze (see page 249) as soon as they are out of the oven.

Storing croissants

There is no question that croissants and their ilk are best eaten warm (not hot) from the oven. So the question arises as to the best way to arrange this. It is possible to freeze croissants at various stages of production. If frozen immediately after being shaped, before proving and baking, they take up a minimum of room in the freezer and can be handled easily. However, they will take quite a while to defrost and prove. If you have sufficient space in the freezer to put the croissants in almost fully proved on flat trays, this has the advantage that they can be egg-washed and baked pretty much straight from the freezer. Any attempt to freeze croissants before baking needs to take account of the damaging effect of freezing on yeast: it definitely loses some vigour after being in a frozen state. So you may wish to increase the amount of yeast in the recipe accordingly. Be aware, however, that the more yeast there is in the dough, the more difficult it will be to build up good laminations.

My preferred option is to bake the croissants lightly and then freeze them. There are not many other baked products that are as good, if not better, from the freezer as fresh, but the effect of reheating a frozen baked croissant is to crisp up the ‘horns’ while leaving a moist bit in the middle.

To reheat frozen croissants, arrange them on a baking tray and put them straight into an oven preheated to 180°C. Bake for about 12 minutes, depending on their size. To check whether they are done, squeeze one in the middle: if there is no hard, frozen core, they are ready. Let them cool a little before eating; as with many foods, their full flavour is accessible when they are just a little above room temperature.

Home-made (and therefore additive-free) croissants do not keep well once baked. Never store them in the fridge but in a polythene bag at ambient temperature. To freshen them up immediately before eating, ‘show them the oven’, as bakers used to say, for as little as 3 minutes. The aim is to soften the hardening starches without drying the thing out.