Croissants Galore!

This week was filled with flakey goodness. Once my group switched to doing croissants, we found ourselves with lots of time to be creative with fillings and flavours.

About 180 croissants!

The first day I whipped up a basil and walnut pesto and a caramel apple almond filling while my group members were all about the bacon and cheese. When we ran out of filling, we made chocolate croissants.

A table full of fillings

Then on Friday, my team-mate M really wanted to make a green tea croissant with red bean filling - a mash-up of Asian flavours with European pastries.

Roll them up

How did they turn out? Delicious! I personally would have preferred a stronger green tea taste, but it was all there - the creamy bitter green tea balanced with the sweet red bean. There was only one issue. Their appearance turned out a little squat and the layers separated. We found out that this particular dough recipe can only handle a certain percentage of butter. We added the green tea by mixing it with additional butter and folded that in. The extra butter actually squished the layers we already laminated into the croissant! Chef told us that the recipe we are using, while good for learning and teaching purposes, is not one that would be used for croissants in industry as it is more of a danish dough. 

Green tea and icing sugar dusting

The inside is a little bit green!

I also learned one more key technique when rolling the triangles into the croissant shape. Do not stretch! When I first learned to make croissants at the downtown campus, we were taught to pull the triangle to make it longer and then roll it. But doing so actually destroys the precious layers that you worked so hard to create. It also alters the thickness of the dough, making thinner parts of the croissant bake faster than the thicker parts. Stretching can also make you prone to rolling the croissant too tight. One that has been rolled too tight will burst open while baking. Perhaps it is the dough recipe we are using that is sensitive to stretching, but it is interesting to see how every establishment has their own methods.

Croissants was a fun station and I wish I could spend more time on it. But alas, everything must continue on, so next week is bread! What am I thinking this time? Mushrooms!