The easiest croissant recipe

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-01-13 00:26

Making the classic puff pastry is often the cause of nightmares, even for seasoned bakers. This croissant recipe doesn't require any special skills from you and will save time and energy, and as a result, you will get a soft flaky treat that melts in your mouth.

Ingredients:

• 2½ cups (190 g) flour
• 150 g butter;
• 120 ml of milk;
• 45 g sugar;
• 25 g fresh yeast;
• a pinch of salt.

Start by kneading the yeast base. Heat the milk, making sure it's not hot enough to kill the yeast, but warm enough to activate it. Dissolve sugar in hot milk and mash fresh yeast. Leave the mixture warm for the second half of the dough.

Combine the sifted flour with a pinch of salt and add chunks of ice-cold butter to it. Use a knife or blender to crumble everything.

Pour the yeast solution into the flour and butter crumbs, mix everything with a spoon. Try to minimize the contact of the dough with your hands so that the pieces of butter do not melt.

Shape the finished dough into a rectangular brick, wrap with plastic wrap and leave in the refrigerator for half an hour.

Now the most time consuming thing remains - rolling. Roll out the dough into a rectangular layer.

Fold the layer in half lengthwise.

Then - again in half, but across. Fold the dough as shown in the photo to get the original piece.

Roll out the dough again and repeat the process three times. At first, the dough will be lumpy, but as it rolls and folds, with a drop of patience and a little flour, it will become very pliable and smooth.

All basic manipulations are over. Now all that remains is to wait. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate for a couple of hours or overnight. This workpiece can also be frozen.

After the dough is rolled out into a rectangle 25 × 40 cm and divided into 8 triangles.

Each of the triangles now remains to roll into a roll, moving from base to top, put on a baking sheet, grease with egg yolk (or a mixture of it with milk) and send to bake: 8 minutes at 220 degrees, and then another 12-15 minutes at 180 degrees.

These simple croissants are very soft and flaky. If desired, at the stage of rolling the dough into the roll, you can add jam or chocolate filling.