Mmmm...Croissants!

Last weekend I made baked stuffed French toast, and I had some filling left over. When pondering what to do with the left-overs, I decided that it would make a great croissant filling. I've been wanting to try my hand at croissants for a while, so this was a great excuse!



A year ago for Christmas, Psycling got me this book. I LOVE it. It is a wonderful source of information on different techniques in pastry making, as well as collection of great recipes. Like most "professional" culinary texts, the recipes are scaled for large scale production, but one thing that I like about this book is that it also provides a "small batch" scale for the recipe. So, when I wanted to make croissants, this was the first place I turned.

If there's one thing I can say about this recipe it's that it's very thorough. It is also very clear that it was written for professionals, kitchens that have things like "proofing boxes" and large working surfaces. But, despite not really having those, I still managed to make this recipe work.

It was a two day process, but the end result was WONDERFUL...nice and flakey with an intense buttery texture and flavor. When you bite into one, you unearth layer after layer of buttery flakiness. Psycling and I found that they made a great afternoon snack, and we definitely couldn't stop at just one! There was only enough filling to make four filled croissants, but they were quite good...just enough filling to add some extra flavor and interest without over-powering the delicate nature of the croissant itself.



I only had one real complaint about this recipe...some of my croissants almost burned. The recipe said to bake at 425 until cooked through or about 25 minutes. When I wennt to check on them at about 20 minutes, they were well past a nice "golden brown" and on their way to black. I know that my oven generally runs pretty true to temperature, so I don't think that was the problem. But fortunately, even though a little dark and crispy, even the burned ones tasted great.

All in all, I really enjoyed making these croissants, and look forward to trying them again sometime. I learned a lot, and while these were quite good, I think I can apply the new lessons and make them even better next time!