Of course there are some notable exceptions to every rule - I love the much breadier varieties that they make at the Natural Bread Company (an Oxfordshire bakery with a shop in Woodstock) - they're always buttery but not greasy; flakey, but not so much that you get annoyed with the bits of pastry all over you. They have texture and chewability. This, for me, is definitely how pastries should be.
Well, having set my bar quite high, I decided it was time to have a go at making breakfast pastries myself. I have a recipe book from the Bourke Street Bakery in Sydney, Australia which gives brilliantly clear instructions on how to make croissants. Time to take the plunge.
So here goes...
The night before, I mixed up a small amount of yeast, flour, milk and sugar, kneeded it well, then left it in the fridge overnight. This is the croissant ferment.
Next day I mixed the dough, kneeded it well and put back in the fridge. The instructions said to leave it there for at least 2 hours; I left mine for about 3 hours.
Next, I weighed out a truely extraordinary amount of butter. I actually used 400g instead of the recipe's 500g, as I wanted to achieve pastries that were a bit less greasy than the norm. I bashed the butter into a square about 1cm thick - I placed the butter between 2 pieces of baking parchement and hit it with a rolling pin. Quite theraputic!
After this I rolled the dough out into a rectangle about the same width as the butter square and about twice the length. I placed the butter in the middle, then folded the dough over the top.
The next step was to roll the dough out into a long rectangle then fold it over; I folded in thirds - one third towards the middle, then the other side over the top of that. I then returned the dough to the fridge to rest for 20 minutes. This had to be repeated twice more, turning the dough through 90 degrees each time I rolled it out. The dough was rolled out 3 times in total.
After a final rest in the fridge I had a laminated dough:
This was now ready to form into pastries.
I had inadvertantly made a hundred-weight of dough, so I had enough to make about 12-15 croissants and also about the same number of bear claws.
Here are the croissants, formed, risen (I let them rise for about an hour and a half, but if its a cool day it may take a bit longer), and ready to go into the oven:
I was very proud that the croissants actually looked like croissants. Amazing!
For the bear claws I made about 150g of frangipane and put a teaspoon of it in the centre of each piece of dough along with a teaspoon of damson jelly then folded the dough over and sealed the edges. Any jam would work nicely but I thought the slight sharpness of damsons would complement the frangipane.
The bear claws looked pretty good as they came out of the oven.
The house smelt lovely for the rest of the day after making these. I was really hoping that their taste would live up to the smell! When I finally did the taste test the next morning (5 minutes in the oven at 180C crisped them up beautifully) they were just as I'd hoped; flakey but still with plenty of dough-texture. The croissants were lovely with some homemade strawberry and mint jam, and the bear claws were tastey just as they came; no extras needed.
Just as well we both liked the outcome as we have freezer full of pastries now! This isn't a recipe I would make often as it is time-consuming and very messy, but I definitely will attempt it again. Its nice to be able to have pastries made to my own preferences. The recipe quantities makes such a lot of pastries that I have several months worth now. I will have to try making the Pain au Raisins recipe next time - its my favourite kind of pastry.
Full marks to the Bourke Street Bakery instructions. Its shaping up to have been an excellent cook-book purchase.
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