Puff Pastry Chocolate Croissants.

So here's the jist. I love croissants and took the class I wrote about here. But I didn't love the dough and outcome all that much. Too doughy, too bready, too thick. Still tasty, but I thought it could be much flakier.

I discovered according to the King Arthur Baking Cookbook that there were two ways to make croissants. With yeast and without. The former is what we made in the class...but the latter was intriguing.

I used the recipe in the book and set out to experiment. I am sure my buttering, folding, and turning methods were not totally spot on...it WAS my first time doing this all on my own. Who knows if I was making letters or orgami with my folds. But I kind of figured that as long as the butter got in, the dough and butter stayed cold, and I folded, turned, and chilled 5-6 times that it would pretty much be ok.



Erueka. I was right! I was worried that because this recipe had no yeast in it, these would turn out to be small croissants with not much lift. Surprise..the idea of keeping them cold in the fridge until baking straight into the hot oven, is so that the fat of the butter in the pockets of the dough can create steam and explode into the flaky layers we all love so much in croissants and other pastries.



The croissants rose nicely in the oven. So far I love this recipe. No worrying about rising time and puffs like crazy? I made most of them with chocolate, but I did try basting some with almond extract since I did not have time to get almond paste. And of course, I had to attempt Nutella..which was amazing.



Overall, this was a winning recipe BUT next time I will add sugar to the recipe. There was none in this recipe at all and while the fillings are sweet, they don't quite compensate for the lack of sugar in the dough. Also I'd put bit more salt.

The funny thing is that this is one of the only books/recipes that talks about making croissants with puff pastry non-yeasted dough. Pretty much every other recipe I found uses yeasted dough. Which leads me to believe that there must be some great flaketastic recipe that uses yeasted that is going to be fluffy and not bready like the ones we made in class.



Anyone got some yeasted flakealicious recipes that they want to push my way? I am on a mission now!! I want to make this recipe again with some mods, but then I want to try a few yeasted recipe for comparison's sake. Fatty buttery goodness, here I come!