Easy Homemade Flaky & Fluffy Croissants
You’ll get your workout in with the rolling and folding but you get a treat at the end so its work it . Right?
Easy Homemade Croissants
Such a fun and easy recipe to do with your kids. These homemade croissants make a great breakfast or a treat with supper so versatile.
Equipment
2 Small Mixing Bowls
1 Large Mixing Bowl
LOTS of Parchment Paper
1 Rolling Pin or a drinking glass if you’re like me and don’t have a rolling pin
1 Knife or Carving Utensil
1 Baking Sheet
1 Basting Brush
In your small mixing bowl, combine warm Raw milk or whole milk, warm water, and yeast. Stir and set aside for about 5-10 minutes until it becomes frothy.
In your large mixing bowl, add all-purpose flour, cane sugar, salt, and then pour in your small mixing bowl of yeast (after yeast has risen). Mix together with your hands and massage everything together until dough forms.
Cover with towel rag and set aside on kitchen counter for a few minutes.
Grab parchment paper (about 1-2 ft lengths worth) and your 3 sticks of butter. Unwrap your butter and place them side by side on top of the parchment paper. Then grab another sheet of parchment paper (same length) and place on top of the 3 blocks of butter.
Grab a wooden paddle or hard object and hit the butter. You want to pound it until it's a flattened block of butter between two sheets of parchment paper.
Once you've successfully let all your anger out onto those butter sticks, you're going to put the flattened butter and large mixing bowl in the fridge for an hour.
After an hour of chilling, grab the large mixing bowl of dough and remove the towel rag. Flour a flat surface and roll out your dough. It might be a little sticky, but that's alright. Using a rolling pin, roll out the dough into a large rectangle. Try to expand the dough as much as possible without making the dough so thin that it looks transparent.
Next, grab your flattened butter block. The butter block should be about half the size of your rolled-out dough rectangle. You can guesstimate the ratio by holding the butter block in the parchment paper over your rectangular dough. If it's slightly smaller, that's alright. If it's significantly smaller, you need to flatten the butter some more. The butter block should be about half the size of your rolled-out dough rectangle. If it's larger, try to shape the butter by folding in some of the edges so it becomes approximately half the size of the dough rectangle. Once you get the sizing right, remove the butter block from the parchment paper and place in the center of the dough rectangle.
You're going to take the outer folds of your dough (think of it in thirds like a letter) and fold it onto the butter block, encasing the butter with your dough. Then you're going to roll it out again into a rectangle and repeat the same folding process again.
Wrap it in parchment paper (I used the parchment paper I already had on hand from the butter) and place back in the fridge for 30 minutes.
After the 30 minutes, remove the dough from the parchment paper and place back on flat surface and roll it out the to a rectangle same way again. Fold again, into thirds, and roll out again.
For this last fold, after you've folded in your thirds, then take the bottom of the rectangle and fold in, then the top of your rectangle and fold in. Your dough should look like a more condensed folded dough brick now. Once again, wrap in the same parchment paper and put back in the fridge for 15 minutes.
After 15 minutes, you're going to roll the dough out one more time as wide as possible (again - without it being too thing that it becomes transparent and flimsy) and make it a large rectangular shape. The dough should be about ¼-inch thickness.
Using a knife, you're going to cut triangles, with the base of the triangle being only being a couple inches wide, and the length being the longer sides.
NOTE: If you want to add any filling to your croissants, now would be the time to add it to the base of your triangle before you roll into the croissant shape. Anything meat related or made with egg should be cooked separately before rolling into your croissant.
Roll each triangle into a croissant shape, starting from the wide end and rolling towards the point of the triangle.
Grab your baking sheet and line with parchment paper.
Place each croissant on the baking sheet with about an inch in between each one. Then cover the croissant with a kitchen towel (or another piece of parchment paper) and let them rise for another hour or until they double in size.
Prepare your egg wash and preheat your oven to 375℉.
Butter your croissants
After your croissant rolls have risen, grab your basting brush and brush over them with the butter.
Place your croissants in the oven at 375℉ for 15-20 minutes or until golden brown and puffy.