The Golden Unicorn The Home Baked Croissant

 Is there such a treat as the home baked croissant? After all this is one of the hardest and most complicated breads or rolls to make. Surprisingly the answer is yes - and even better home bakers can make chocolate, almond and even ham and cheese ones. You don't have to go to a fancy bakery anymore to get these gems.

Claire Saffitz, a  well known pastry chef who both writes for Bon Appetit and appears on their You Tube channel, pondered this and wrote a very detailed how to. Croissants are tough to create. There's that crisp brittle egg washed crust with layers of flaky , buttery bread underneath.  Keep in mind that the bakery made ones are rolled out by slab rollers in temperature controlled rooms. The dough is laminated quickly meaning  flattening the butter out between rolls of dough  which produces light flaky  uniform crescents. Home bakers can do this but this has to be done by hand, making it slower, harder and much more variable. Chef Saffitz encourages though, stating that once you master the dough you can then master  adding those delicious  fillings like ham and cheese, chocolate and almond. Keep in mind that not only baking croissants is labor intensive it's also time consuming. Most of the active works takes place on the first day. Also the kitchen temp has to be cool. Keep it at seventy-six degrees or lower . Make room  in both the fridge and the freezer for the dough or detrempe as the French call it. All the ingredients must be weighed too. The liquid to flour ratio has to be perfect too or you'll wind up with either too dry or too soggy croissants.

The ingredients are just as important. Look for a high protein flour which can support all that butter as well as being a high gluten flour. Chef Saffitz recommends the classic King Arthur all purpose flour; It has a relatively high protein content of 11. 7 and it contains a small amount of malted barley flour. This last gives the crust a crispier cracklier exterior. Yeast is another important factor. Use fresh or baker's yeast.It is more reliable than active dry yeast however the last is easier to find. Make sure it's alive and it's well before its' expiration date.  You can also proof it by adding warm milk in the base recipe and then adding the yeast to proof that. One of the most important ingredients is the butter. Please use European ones like Plusgras or Kerrygold.It's eighty two percent  butter fat at least  where as American butters top out at that . The high fat content lends to the flavor and also makes the butter more "plastic" or malleable. Kerrygold is the best for this because it maintains a waxy malleable texture while resisting cracking or splitting when its' being rolled inside the dough. Then there's the egg wash. Just go careful with this. Use a mix of the yolk and heavy cream for a glossy bronzed crust and wipe the drips off the baking pan. They can burn while the croissants bake.

Yes you can bake buttery,. crisp croissants at home. It's a labor intensive process but once you get the hang of it , it'll be easy. The result is a golden unicorn with flaky layers and a heavenly rich taste.