Flaky Butter Croissants

Homemade croissants are second to none, don’t you agree?

You’ve probably seen that a few weeks ago I made a batch of pains au chocolat from scratch. As these went down well with everyone who tried them, I tried my hand at making croissants this time. Not just any croissant but buttery, flaky, super scrumptious croissants. The ones you would find at those cute little boulangeries in Paris.

So, if you are in for a special treat, then please continue to scroll down. But keep in mind that the recipe is rather time consuming. You could have fresh croissants in about 4 hours or you could make the dough today and bake the flaky rich crescent-shaped rolls tomorrow.

Making Croissants

1. Start by putting 150g of butter at room temperature onto a sheet of parchment paper. Cover it with another sheet and use a rolling pin to roll the butter into the right shape: a rectangle that is about 1.5 cm thick. Chill your butter rectangle for about 20 mins in the fridge.  See the pictures below to help guide you!
2. While the butter is chilling, make the white bread dough by combining all ingredients. Knead until smooth and let it rest for a bit.
3. Then sift together both types of flour into a bowl of a stand mixer and add salt, sugar, fresh yeast, and lukewarm water and use a fork to roughly mix everything together. Add the white bread dough. Now beat the mixture at medium speed with the dough hook attachment for about 10 minutes until the dough feels elastic.
4. Place the dough onto a floured surface and roll it into a rectangle, too. The dough rectangle should be bigger than the butter one.
5. Take out the butter rectangle of the fridge and place it in the centre of the dough. Then fold each of the 4 sides of the dough into the centre to completely enclose the butter rectangle. You should now have a butter parcel consisting of two layers of dough and one layer of butter in between. Wrap the butter parcel with cling film and place it in the fridge for 30 minutes.
6. After 30 minutes, roll out this package of butter and dough into a rectangle on a floured surface. It should be 3 times as long as the initial parcel. Then, fold it in thirds like a letter and brush off any excess flour. Again, wrap this parcel in cling film and let it chill in the fridge for about 30 minutes.
7. Repeat step 6 (rolling and chilling the dough) three more times. This is going to create all the delicious layers. However, after each fold you should turn the dough 90 degrees before rolling it again.
8. Once you have completed rolling the dough four times, you can finally go about forming the croissants: trim the edges of your dough rectangle, cut it into 8 triangles and make small slits (about 2 cm) in each of the eight croissant bases. Then carefully stretch the bases a bit and roll the dough triangles into the desired shape.
9. Let the croissants rest for about 60 minutes at room temperature.
10. Finally, bake them at 160 degrees fan for about 28 minutes until golden brown.

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Have you ever made croissants from scratch?