Homemade croissants: here’s how to make them

Day 1 (for 500 grams of flour, double all the quantities)

• Start by adding your yeast to the water and stir well
• Next with a spatula mix flour, sugar and salt in a bowl and create a hole in the middle
• Once the yeast is activated, add it to the mixture, followed by the milk
• Now add your honey and start mixing everything together (kitchen aid at low speed or by hand)
• After a couple of minutes add the butter and keep kneading for 3 mins
• At medium-high speed, knead for 5 mins
• Once done, remove your dough from the bowl and check its temperature (it should be below 25 degrees Celsius). Place it back in the mixing bowl and cover it for 45 mins
• Once timing is over, place it within a cling film and seal it well so no crust forms. Make sure you press gently to release early gas bubbles
• Place it in the fridge overnight so the dough can ferment and develop flavors

Day 2

Shaping your butter

• Place your block of butter inside a Ziplock bag, close it very well and empty it from air as much as possible.
• Beat the butter block with your pastry roll until it gets pliable and shape it around the Ziplock bag (I personally use 17 cm X 19 cm bags)
• Place it in the fridge for about a couple of hours

Tourage

• Now get your butter out and let it soften for about 10 minutes, and verify its temperature is between 15-18 degrees Celsius (not less or it will break and marble, no more or it will be absorbed by the dough)
• Take your dough out of the fridge and place it on a lightly floured work surface
• Gently press the dough to release all the gas bubbles. Give your dough a 38 cm X 17 cm shape, so the width with the butter block coincide and the length is double
• Put the butter in the middle and using a knife or cutter, cut the extra dough pieces back and forth
• Now cover your butter with these extra dough and make sure to press gently on the joint two pieces of dough to close it like a book (seal it by pressing gently with the pastry roll)
• Start to roll your dough along the direction of that newly formed line in the middle, by first pressing gently along the dough to create waves
• Then roll from the middle to the upper side then from the middle to the lower side. Keep rolling until you obtain a dimension of 45 cm
• Now we will do a double fold: Bring one extremity to ⅓ and the other to ⅔. Press gently on the junction with your roll. Then fold it back on itself (remove excess flour and brush a bit of water to stick them together)
• Gently roll over the dough, very lightly and put that dough in a Ziplock bag and in your fridge for about 1 hour
• Gently flour the work surface, take your dough out of the fridge and place the closed extremity at your left, as if you had a book in front of you and wait 10 mins for the butter to soften a bit. Gently create waves on your dough and roll it to give it a length of 45 cm
• Now we will do a simple fold: Bring one extremity to ½ and the other to cover it. Then place your dough in a Ziplock bag and in the fridge for at least 3 hours

Shaping your croissants

• Gently flour your work surface, take your dough out of the fridge and place it there
• Keep the left extremity on your side like a book and start rolling
• Now you will roll in both directions in order to obtain 4 mm of thickness of dough
• This should give you a 30 cm X 25 cm rectangle
• To shape your croissants do 2 cuts on one side, spaced of 10 cm
• Using a kitchen knife, cut along the new cuts in order to obtain 3 rectangles of 25 cm X 10 cm
• Next do a diagonal cut for each rectangle, in order to obtain 6 triangles
• Take each triangle and very gently try elongating it without destroying the layers
• Now starting from the base of the triangle, do a small cut in the middle, open up the wings a little and start rolling your croissant
• Using a baking tray, with a parchment paper placed over it, place your 6 croissants, making sure they rest on the extremity
  
• This will make sure that the croissants will not open once they are being baked

Shaping your pains au chocolat

• For the pain au chocolat, your rectangle should be 24 cm X 30 cm.
  
• Cut the rectangle in three equal parts of 8 cm at the base in width and 30 cm in length
• Cut the rectangle in half and place 1 chocolate stick of 8 cm of length a few mm from the first extremity, place the dough over it, then place the second chocolate stick when the dough meets itself and roll over it
• Cover your baking tray with a tissue and place it in the fridge

Day 3

• In the morning, take your baking tray out of the fridge and put it in your turned off oven for a couple of hours until your croissants/pains au chocolat have doubled in volume. You can also use the fermentation mode of your oven if available but keep the temperature below 30 degrees Celsius
• Then remove it from your oven, check that your croissants and pains au chocolat have doubled in size and are wobbly. Now preheat it at 170 degrees Celsius (336 degrees Fahrenheit) with the grid in the middle and convection on
• Apply to them very gently a coat of egg yolk and milk mixture
• Put them in the oven with convection on for about 15-18 mins,
  
• They should turn out gold by the end
  
• Place them on a cooling grid and wait 20-30 mins. You now have freshly baked homemade croissants!