A Perfect Croissant

Even though a croissant is not healthy bread, no one can refuse a croissant if it is a good one. One of so many of my bad eating habits is this crispy, buttery bread. However, to defend this kind of bad eating habit, I am continuously trying to figure out how to make this wonderful bread at home with a reduced quantity of butter in the bread, but still taste wonderful. Trust me! Readers, finally this recipe make me so happy, and once again the bread machine comes into play.

Ingredients:
Poolish:
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup lukewarm water
1/4 tsp active yeast
Final dough
1/2 cup skim milk at room temperature
1/4 cup sugar
1 tsp salt
3 tbs soft butter
3 cups all-purpose or bread flour
All poolish ingredients after 12 hours (see directions below)
1 1/4 tsp yeast
Roll in butter
2 1/2 sticks cold butter

Directions:
In a small bowl, combine the poolish ingredients. Mix well and cover with plastic wrap for 12 hours
In a bread machine pan, combine the final dough ingredients as listed in the order listed above. Choose the dough function and press start. When the machine stops mixing and kneading, remove dough and place in a medium size mixing bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 2 hours.

 

Place the chilled butter between two sheets of wax paper or parchment paper and use the rolling pin to make a square 1/2 inch thick. Refrigerate to keep the butter cool so that it doesn't harden again or melt further (it needs to be the same softness as the dough or it will break up when folded).

After two hours, remove dough from the bowl and place dough on a lightly floured surface. Roll out the dough in four different directions to form a piece of dough large enough to hold a square of butter in its center.

 Put the butter in the center and fold the four arms of the dough to completely cover the butter.

Position the dough so that it looks like a book. Roll the dough away from you into a rectangle,

keeping its corner as square as you can. Then fold the top third down and the bottom third up to make a parcel of three even layers.

Repeat the rolling, folding, and turning, trying to keep the corner layers even. Wrap in plastic wrap and chill for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, repeat the rolling, folding and turning at least for 4 times. Each time refrigerate for 30 minutes. Now the dough is ready to use.

Before baking:
Roll out dough into a 12" x 15" rectangle on lightly flour surface .Second, cut the rectangle in half lengthwise, resulting in two 15" x 6" rectangles.

Third, cut each of the 15" x 6" rectangles into four equal-sized 3.75" x 6" new rectangles (8 total).

Finally, cut each of the 8 new rectangles diagonally, resulting in 16 triangles. Roll each triangle into a crescent shape.

 

 

 

 

Brush the croissants with the egg wash. The croissants can be baked immediately or covered with plastic wrap and kept in the refrigerator to be baked in the morning.

Pre-heat oven to 400°. Bake for 15 minutes. Then lower the temperature to 325° and bake the croissants further for another 10 minutes.