Re-Cap of the Croissant Bake-off

Beyond Umami — Tue, 16 Jun 2015 04:41:00 +0000

As promised from my last post, here is the re-cap from our Croissant Bake-off where I baked the Duchess Bake Shop croissant using their cookbook, Dan baked the sourdough croissant from Tartine Bakery‘s cookbook, Addie baked David Lebovitz’ Whole Wheat Croissant and Lesley followed a croissant recipe from La Cuisine Paris.

The plan was that everyone’s croissant dough was to be mostly prepped upon arriving at L & S’ house and then the croissants would be baked off in succession. Above, is a picture of everyone prepping their croissants doughs to roll out, proof or preparing the egg wash for the oven.

One reason for us baking all the croissants around the same time frame was because we wanted to see the cross section of each croissant fairly soon after they have been baked. Above is the cross section for the croissant I baked (using Duchess Bake Shop’s recipe). You can see that there are a number of layers and some space in between the layers.

Dan’s croissant using Tartine’s sourdough recipe is out of the oven! Here Dan is cutting a cross section of his, under the watchful eye of Addie :D.

Here is the Parisian recipe that Lesley baked. As you can see, it also has a number of layers as well as a flakiness to it.

Here are all the croissants lined up according to size. Now, Addie did say that he cut down his whole wheat croissant dough in half so usually they should be similar in size to the Parisian and Duchess’ croissant size.

Cross-section of all four of the croissants. From left to right: Duchess’ recipe, David Lebovitz’, Le Cuisine Paris and Tartine’s croissant. One big difference is the use of flour across all the recipes. Granted, Addie used 60% whole wheat flour his. Tartine’s recipe called for 100% bread flour, Duchess’ recipe used mostly all purpose flour except for bread flour in the starter, and the Parisian recipe was 100% all purpose flour.

In terms of flavour, Lesley used the most expensive butter out of the four of us. Using more expensive butter with a higher fat content does not affect the flakiness but it definitely showed in the smell and taste of the croissant. The Tartine recipe used a sourdough starter so that croissant had the distinct creamy sour dough taste to it. However, it also had the nicest volume and colour compared to the rest.

In terms of texture, Tartine’s recipe asked for 100% bread flour which results in a breadier croissant whereas using 100% all purpose flour will result in a flakier croissant like Le Cuisine Paris’ recipe.

Now, to get super technical. According to Dan’s research, whole wheat flour while healthier results in denser croissants because the whole wheat flour is heavier and sharper (jagged) which prevents gluten development. As a result, it looks more dense compared to the other croissants.

Overall, we found that the Duchess recipe was the most accessible for the first-time croissant baker compared to all of the other recipes. Mostly because there are step by step pictures to accompany the easy to follow instructions, exact descriptions for size, dimensions and how many croissants would be made. In comparison, the other recipes needed a sourdough starter to be made first before even starting, and lots of technical details for rolling and folding with fewer pictures.

Lastly, we compared the croissants we baked with the ones from local bakeries. Cindy (from Lets Om Nom) bought croissants from Cafe Bicyclette, Bonton Bakery and Leva. Sadly, she didn’t have enough time that day as she was already criss-crossing the city for croissants from Duchess.

So in the picture above, the top left picture has Leva’s on the far left, a cross-section of Bonton’s croissant, and lastly on the bottom left in a cross-section of Cafe Bicyclette’s. We did learn that croissants from Cafe Bicyclette are imported frozen from France and baked in house.

So in the end, if you are considering baking versus buying croissants it is worth trying to bake croissants at home – at least once. There is nothing that can compare to the aroma of fresh baked croissants at home. It does take roughly 6 hours of work, even with me following Duchess’ easy to follow recipe so I can see how that can be a daunting task.

However, to make it fun ask a couple of friends to join you in the process!

Croissant Challenge – Baking the Duchess croissant

Beyond Umami — Sat, 06 Jun 2015 22:18:00 +0000

The above picture depicts some beautiful croissants that I not only baked, but made from scratch! So, you are probably thinking this is something I do every once in a while considering my love for macarons and complicated baked goods. However, I must say this picture also represents the very first time I have ever baked croissants – unless you count those Pillsbury ones that we used for the homemade cronut post. Like every great picture there is a backstory and this picture is no exception to that rule.

Back in November 2014, I had the very exciting opportunity to attend the launch of Duchess Bake Shop’s cookbook. While Giselle was introducing the cookbook she mentioned how some recipes were easier than others such as the Ginger Cookies and some were more challenging such as the macaron recipes and the croissants. At that moment, the thought occurred to me that I had to bake the Duchess croissants.

Several months later, around our dinner table a few friends and I decided that it would be fun to do a croissant bake-off. Yes! A croissant bake-off where each person would choose a different croissant recipe to bake from and then we would time them all to bake-off around the same time for maximum freshness (more on that in the next post). For now, here are some notes and pictures from my experience baking the Duchess croissant.

The first thing to do was to make the starter. So I measured out the yeast and warm water. While that was dissolving, I added in some bread flour and then let it rise. Then, I measured out some butter, sugar and salt and added that directly to the starter.

Next, I placed the starter in an air tight location (I usually set it inside the microwave) so it could grow some more. After about 30-45 minutes, the starter was ready to use! I moved the starter to the mixing bowl, added in the milk and all purpose flour and mixed it at low speed. It should all come together and look like this (below).

Once the dough was made, I placed it into a oiled bowl and let it rise for about 90 minutes. Meanwhile, the butter plaque had to be made! The butter plaque has to fit nicely into the dough (like a package). This step took a little bit of measuring, hence the measuring tape.

The Duchess recipe book had a great suggestion to create a nicely shaped butter plaque using a resealable plastic bag. I didn’t quite have the same dimensions for the bag specified in the recipe but I measured it out to be approximately the right size for the butter plaque. The recipe in the book also has some easy to follow instructions for how to make this.

By the time I finished making the butter plaque and placed it into the fridge to keep cold, the dough had doubled in size and was ready to use. For Christmas, I got Dan a marble rolling pin and it is probably the best kitchen item we have bought! The heavy weight makes rolling the dough out a breeze! Honestly, getting the dough to the size I needed to fit the butter plaque in took no time at all. Dan can attest to this as he had previously used a light wooden rolling pin for the cronuts.

One of the things that was different about this croissant recipe compared to others is cutting the dough in half- instead of folding. With the butter plaque firming in place, I squished the sides of the dough closed in order to keep the butter inside.

Next, came some more rolling, placing the dough back into the fridge (so the butter doesn’t melt) and specific folds such as the book fold and the single fold (sort of like folding a letter). The recipe in the Duchess cookbook is very detailed so it was quite easy to follow.

After all that, the dough rested in the fridge for another 40 minutes. By this time, I was getting tired as it was hitting close to 12am (I started this croissant baking later than expected at 8pm on a Friday). However, we had decided to bake off all of our croissants around the same time the next day, so I was determined to finish! This recipe is also a bit different compared to other recipes as there is less proofing time and folds other than the book and single fold.

I rolled out the dough to about my arm’s length and then scored triangles out. In order to have the characteristic crescent shape for this style of croissants (not chocolate or almond), you want to cut a small line at the base of each croissant before you roll.

The almost finished product! Here they are! Beautiful raw croissants. Once rolled, they sat overnight in the fridge under saran wrap.

In the morning, I took the tray of croissants out and placed them into the cold oven to continue proofing (approximately 1-2 hours). They should grow a little bigger.

Once we arrived at L & S’ house, we quickly whisked together a egg wash made from egg, salt and milk to brush over each croissant and popped my croissants into the oven!

After 18 minutes of baking at 425F in L & S’ oven, my croissants were done!

Stay tuned for the next post about the comparisons and results from the croissant bakeoff!

croissant – Beyond Umami

Re-Cap of the Croissant Bake-off

Croissant Challenge – Baking the Duchess croissant