Croissant troubleshooting
The video recipe from Claire Saffitz is a fun watch! Here's the written version of the recipe.
- One of my biggest problems happened in the first step when I was mixing the ingredients together. I know Claire shows that you can just dump your yeast in and the warm milk + water mixture will hydrate it, but this was absolutely not the case for me. I had gone far past the initial rising step before I realized that there were still dried, yeast granules in my dough. (see photo)
Should I have stopped here and restarted? Probably. But I was very burntout from life so ya know, this will probably shine a light on the rest of the mistakes I make later.
- The butter was too cold during one of the rolling and folding processes, so you can see here it 'shattered'. I was too fixated on trying to keep everything cold that I forgot to let it rest 5 minutes on the counter after taking it out from the fridge.
- Because the yeast didn't fully dissolve, the croissants didn't rise as much when I proofed it in the oven with the skillet of warm water. (I kept the temperature perfect during the proofing stage). I tried to compensate by letting it proof longer.
THIS WAS MY BIGGEST MISTAKE.
The extra hour I left it in didn't actually make it rise any higher (or as Claire likes to call it, 'Michelin it up'). In fact, I might have overproofed it, and also made the dough and butter far too warm. While I did put it back in the fridge for 20 mins as stated before baking, it wasn't enough to save it.
- Don't use these plastic brushes for egg washing. They're fine for regular breads, but when you have to do only the smooth sides and not touch the exposed edges for fear of fusing them shut with egg wash and preventing a proper spread in the oven, these plastic brushes SUCK ASS.
I was fighting my tool the entire time. It simply didn't hold the egg wash and I was forced to do quick dollops. Incredibly painful procedure. Just buy a proper brush, please.
First twenty minutes of baking. Photo taken when the croissants need to be swapped top to bottom, front to back. You can see the butter has completely melted out which is basically what happens when your dough is too warm. My heart broke when I saw this.
Finished, but the amount of butter leaked out on that tray is...oof. I had to remove the croissants to cool separately, then spent a good 10-15 minutes slowly wiping the melted butter before washing the trays with warm water and soap.
Notice how flat the croissants are. That's synonymous with overproofing + being too warm so the butter completely melted out and pooled in the tray. I think they're slightly overbaked? I was told to bake at 190C but I knew my oven was a bit stronger so I dropped it to 185C. Probably should've kept going down.
But I did my best. my besht!
All the layers and flavour is there, but there's none of that beautiful airy spiral. So the texture is missing, and it's a little bit drier due to the loss of butter.
Key takeaways:
Dissolve your yeast granules. (Your gut instinct as a baker should tell you to do this anyway.)
Temperature control, as always. Not too cold when rolling out your dough. Don't overproof, and make sure your dough isn't too warm before you bake.
One of my biggest surprises when eating it was that this tasted a lot closer to an Australian croissant. I'm talking from my own experience here, but whenever I have authentic, French-made croissants in NZ at some of the highest rated shops here, they're always softer and lighter. But when I was in Sydney and Melbourne (and of course, the infamous Lune), every single croissant I had was significantly harder and chewier.
I came back from holiday preferring the Aussie ones, and Claire's recipe reminds me of them; more baked, crispier, chewier, and texturally more interesting with every bite.