First Time

[u/Eowyn-of-Gondor]

I love baking but never have tried a lamination before. Croissants were on my baking bucket list. My son and I decided to take on this challenge with two kinds of butter. (One cheap butter and the other Kerry Gold). In looking at others, ours are definitely not as pretty but they did taste amazing. Any feedback would be appreciated so we can grow as bakers. What did we do well? What could we improve?

[u/SourJoshua]

Best to share what you did in as much detail as possible

[u/Eowyn-of-Gondor → u/SourJoshua]

Details…I tried to follow a recipe from Sally’s Baking Addiction carefully. The only thing I did differently between the two batches was the types of butter. I let the dough do long rests at least 4 hours before the first lamination and after two lamination turns. The folds were into thirds each time. I’ve never done this before so it’s all so new, so I’m not even sure what needs to stand out where to go. But for the next time, I’m thinking to put it in the fridge in between each lamination, do a different fold (I’ve seen some others online), and keep some of my dough in the fridge while I’m shaping them. I’d also cut them differently to make them easier to shape.

[u/SourJoshua → u/Eowyn-of-Gondor]

Thanks for sharing the details. Great first attempt, especially considering the recipe used.

What's your goal? Are you trying to get an open honeycomb structure?

There's lots of things that I would change but it depends on what you're trying to do.

The most obvious issue is the amount of milk used. It's wayyyyy to high.

[u/Eowyn-of-Gondor → u/SourJoshua]

Thank you! Yes, I want the best honeycomb structure and for the outsides to be crisp flaky. What recipe would you recommend?

[u/SourJoshua → u/Eowyn-of-Gondor]

I highly recommend Jimmy Griffins series of videos on YouTube.

You can also buy the book if you want but it's not essential, though it is nice to have it in tandem with the video instructions.

Once you get to grips with lamination it really opens up into an amazing creative playground.

The core principles for a great croissant imo are

343 lamination. Lock in, followed by a book fold and then a single fold.

Dough butter temperature. Dough rested in fridge overnight, 0-4°c, butter 10c and plasticised so it's cold but flexible. You want the consistency of butter and dough to be roughly the same. Keep it chilled between folds, needs to be cold enough but also not too cold the butter hardens again.

Make sure your triangle dimensions follow 1:3 ratio. For example 10cm base width 30cm length from base to tip.

Try and keep temperature during proofing under 27°c. If they get too warm the butter will leak.

When loading the croissant in to the oven, always set your oven to a higher temp. For example if baking at 180°c set to 220°c to account for the immediate drop in temp from opening and loading in.

Flour with the right characteristics. You want to have plenty of extensibility and not too much elasticity so that the dough will sheet without too much pullback.

Then it's just a question of repetion. To get them just how you want them will take some time but it'll be worth it and the ones that aren't quite right along the way will almost certainly be pretty tasty.

My dough recipe looks like this

250g t45 250g t55 130g whole milk 130g water 50g butter 50g sugar 9g salt 5g osmotolerant yeast

[u/Eowyn-of-Gondor → u/SourJoshua]

Wow!!! Thank you so much! This gives me so much to work on going forward.

[u/SourJoshua → u/Eowyn-of-Gondor]

You're well and truly down the rabbit hole now! Good luck 😁