greg@olivej.UUCP (Greg Paley) (01/07/84)
The prices on croissants from local bakeries have gotten to be such that I had to choose to either forget them or make them myself. I chose the latter, and found it not nearly as difficult as I would have thought. The best recipe I've found is in "From Julia Child's Kitchen" (Knopf) and produces a croissant on a par with those I've been served for breakfast in Paris hotels and far superior to any bakery in the SF bay area. Although it does indeed take a total of about 24 hours from start to finish, very little of that is actually "working" time - it's mostly allowing the dough either to rise or, later, chill. You can even start up the process, decide to finish up a few days later, and freeze the dough until you're ready to take it up again. Therefore I recommend the book. There is one tricky thing in the recipe (in fact in all croissant recipes) that I've found a neat way around, if you have a food processor. Once the dough has risen both times and is rolled out, you have to spread chilled butter over part of the surface. Spreading chilled butter isn't all that easy. Julia has you soften the butter first by beating it with a rolling pin. What works just as well, however, is to freeze it and then grate it with the grating blade of a food processor (I use a Cuisinart DLC-7E). Then you can just sprinkle the grated, still cold butter over just the area you want. The reason you need to keep the butter cold is that the "flakiness" of the dough is caused by the presence of distinct layers of dough and butter. If the butter gets too warm, it is absorbed into the dough and you lose this texture. Greg Paley Olivetti ATC, Cupertino Ca.