Sourdough Croissants recipe

Yields: 12 Servings Difficulty: Difficult Prep Time: 48 Hr Total Time: 48 Hr

Hello foodies,

this week recipe is about making croissant with a sourdough starter, ” le croissant au levain”. An old method to make croissants, using natural yeast and non commercial yeast. As you may know working with sourdough starter is not always easy but very rewarding in terms of flavours of your end product.

Sourdough, is natural and during the fermentation the acid breaks down some of the gluten which makes breads and dough more gentle to your digestive system. However, i wont be kidding you and tell you that a sourdough croissant is healthy ahaahahahha. Nervertheless, it is way tastier that what you find commercially made out there.

I must say this was my first trial at it. Maybe i was just lucky and had a good result. But, i tried again making chocolate croissants with the same recipe and it worked too. so there you are i am sharing it to you. get your patience game on as you will be engaging in a 48 hours process. I will recommend this recipe for people who already have knowledge in making sourdough products and have made croissants before.

Timeline:

Friday 10 am : Activate (feed my sourdough starter)

Friday 3 pm : make the dough (base)

Friday 3.30 pm: Fold the butter in the dough , give it a simple turn (fold)

Friday 4.30 pm: Give your dough another single turn (fold)

Friday 5.30 pm: Give your dough the third and last turn

Friday 6.30 pm : roll out, cut divide, roll and proof

Satuday 6.30 pm : bake

You dont have too much time hands on with criossant pastry, it is just the resting time that cant take a while.

Fact: Croissants were inented by the Austrian not the french. They came to France with Marie Antoinette our late and last Queen….. We just perefected the art of layering.

Les get rolling

Hope you enjoy it.

Frenchy

Ingredients

0/14 Ingredients
Adjust Servings
    This Starter feeding
    • Croissant dough
    • Lamination process (Layers)

Instructions

0/52 Instructions
    Feed-Activate your Starter
  • Before you do anything you need to feed your sourdough starter and look to see if it is alive and activate.
  • Here, i mix 60 g of sourdough starter (Mother) , 30g of bakers flour and 30 g of water.
  • Mark the jar. and after 4 to 6 hours in a warm room your starter should have double in sizr and have little bubbles.
    • Lets make the Croissant dough
  • Using a digital scale, measure correctly all ingredients. for this recipe i am going to use a bench mixer.
  • Give it a quick mix. Remember that salt kills natural yeast so we do not want them in contact.
  • Add the sugar.
  • Add the milk powder.
  • Add the bread improver.
  • Add the honey...... honeeyyyyy.
  • Add the butter
  • Here you can clearly see that my sourdough starter has double in size and well activated.
  • Add your sourdough starter.
  • Add the cold water.
  • Place the bowl and dough together and work it for 3 minutes at speed 1
  • Then, work the dough for 8 minutes at speed 3 on this machine.
  • Your dough should look a little shiny, silky and a little smooth.
  • You can always do a window check if you want to feel re assure....It means your are checking that your dough is smooth and there are not many gluten strand in the dough... Technical i know i would do a video on that somedays.
  • Roll out the dough to 30 cm X 15 cm, cover and put it on a tray and in the freezer for 30 minutes.
    • Lets Laminate (Create layers with the butter and the dough)
  • We will need to work out your butter to make it pliable here. During the entire process, your butter should be of the same texture (feel) as the dough... so here we are going to try to create a rectangle half the size of the dough you just roll out..
  • To make my butter pliable, i leave it out on the bench for a while, beat it, shape it, roll it... the video could be more helpful if you have never done this.
  • When my buter is uniform in thichness and pretty much the size i desire i leave it on the bench and will start the layering process. However if your butter got to soft during the process, place it in the fridge for few minutes. A butter to soft will run away from the dough and will make your pastry sticky and you will not have nice layers. A butter too hard, wont be easy to roll and layer and will make your dough crack and your butter will look like fragment in the dough.
  • Here i can see my butter is way lareger than half the size of the dough. No panic.... we will roll out the dough a little more.
  • Place a little bit of flour on the bench and roll out the dough a front of you gently..
  • Check and see if now your dough is twice as long as the butter. if it is yeahhhhhhhhhhhh you are on track.
  • now fold the top dough on top of the butter.
  • Professionals try to have the butter as close as possible to the edge of the dough for a better layering and end products.
  • Using a rolling pin, gently roll out the dough up and down, making sure the butter does not run away from the dough and try to keep that rectangular shape.
  • Grab the top end of the dough and fold it towards you to a third of the dough.
  • grab the bottom end of the dough and fold it over the dough. all the fold should align together.
  • then turn the dough clockwise to a quarter turn. If you watch this video or the puff pastry video you will understand. you have completed 1 simple fold (1 turn)
  • I personally cut little incision on the ply to help the dough rolling out in the next fold. Cover the douigh and let it rest for 50 minutes in the fridge. After 50 minutes, let the dough come back to room temperature for 10 to 15 minutes before starting rolling the dough again.
  • Flour your bench and positione your dough exactly how you finished it, in the previous fold. Feel the texture of the butter and the dough before your roll.
  • Roll out again gently up and down, dont put too much pressure on the rolling pin.
  • the dough should expand without cracking or butter coming out.
  • once again fold the top end towards you to a 3rd of the size of the dough.
  • then the bottom end over the fold you just did. and align the plies.. you can also use a dry brush to remove the excess of flour.
  • Give it a 1/4 turn clockwise as you did the first fold .. wrap it and let it rest in the fridage like the first fold. You will need to repeat the operation one more time to obtain 3 folds (turn).
    • Cutting and shaping the croissants.
  • Roll out your pastry to 2 or 3 mm thin and 24 cm width. If it is easier cut your dough in half prior trying to roll it all out.. This is what i did here. I rolled out my dough a little already and cut it in hoal as i do not want to force the dough rolling it out and put pressure on my dough which will break my layers.
  • Once your dough is thin enough, using a ruler, mark your dough every 12 cm on one side starting from the edge.
  • Do the same on the other side. However, starting from the edge you will need to mark 6 cm then every 12cm this is to create the triangle shape...
  • Then using a long knife, cut the triangles one by one
  • Check them layers.
  • grab one fo the triangle.
  • gently roll the base away from you, keeping it going straight and roll to the point.
  • Keep rolling
  • Place the point under the croissant.
  • Roll them all.
    • Proving at home.
  • Place your croissant on a tray with baking paper. Here i brushed the croissant with a little eggwash to keep them moist and prevent drying.
  • Then i place a tall glass in the middle of the try and put the tray in a large bin bag. The glass preven the bin bag not touching the pastry. I left the croissants for 24 hours in the room to prove and ferment.
    • Baking the croissants
  • 24 hours later, the croissant did not double in size but raise by 50-75% which i was happy with. Then i preheat the oven at 200 C and give them another eggwash brush.
  • Place the tray in the oven and bake for 20-25 min at 200 c . then voila
  • Bon Appetit. Frenchy

Notes

The beauty of this recipe is that my croissants were still nice to eat 3 days later, not like coomercial croissants that are all soggy the next day.

Tags

#baking  #bakingsourdoughcroissant  #bestcroissantrecipe  #Croissant  #croissantaulevain  #croissants  #howtomakecroissant  #howtomakesourdough  #howtomakesourdoughcroissant  #levain  #sourdoughcroissants  

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