My croissants have a bread-like crumb and no layers. What did I do wrong?
Several factors can be the cause of this. Most likely it is an accumulation of things going sideways. It starts with pressing too hard on the dough to try and lengthen it while it is already fighting back. Keeping at this for a while means, next to the pressing on the dough, you are taking too long and the butter starts to get warm and is absorbed by the dough. So in this case, while still learning and getting better and faster, until you do make sure you build in extra fridge time to cool the dough and then continue. Handle the dough with care, gently elongate without pressing too much or putting your weight into it.
I want to bake croissants, but live in a tropical location. Can I still make them?
We have gotten tips from people who have successfully baked croissants in the tropics. The top tips:
Cool ingredients and even utensils in the fridge before use, and use the fridge a lot to cool your dough and cool for longer if needed.
Roll the dough at night, when it is cooler. Check the weather reports and choose the coolest period possible.
My butter breaks into pieces. What should I do?
We use organic butter with a high fat content and low water content (about 82% fat). A higher water content tends to make butter hard, which promotes tearing and breaking and ruins the layers. Your butter needs to be pliable and at the same time not too soft at the moment of usage.
Help, butter leaks out when baking!
Your croissants were probably under-proofed. Just let them proof a bit longer so they get wobbly and increase visually in size. When under-proofed the butter tends to leak out from in between the layers and you end up with a butter puddle.
FLOUR
Can I use another type of flour than the French type 55 you use?
For a good croissant you need the right type of flour. We have tried at least 5 different types and brands before we found a winner. If you cannot get the type 55 French flour try to find a flour with around 11% protein (this can be an all purpose / plain flour) and make sure it is a good quality flour. Try different brands if needed or use a combination of flours. Using 100% bread flour can make your result ‘heavy’ so try a combination with all purpose for instance.
My dough was too moist and sticky to handle. What should I change?
First of all it seems your flour absorbs less moisture than the type 55 flour we are using and you need to make adjustments by using a little less moisture next time.
My dough resists and shrinks back when I try to roll it out. What can I do?
At any stage when the rolling of the dough gets harder you can cover the dough and let the gluten relax for 10 to 20 minutes in the fridge before continuing.
Can I use fresh yeast instead of instant yeast?
Yes you can. Use three times the amount given (so for our recipe 33 grams of fresh yeast).
Can I use active dry yeast instead of instant yeast?
Yes you can. Use 1.2 times the amount given (so for our recipe 13.2 grams active dry yeast).
At what stage should I add filling to my croissants?
You add filling just before the shaping / rolling up stage. Be aware that any filling will affect the layers and you will need less filling than you probably think. With chocolate for instance you will need no more than 5 to 7 grams per croissant. Professional bakers use stick chocolate for this, but you can use your own good quality (dark) chocolate. Fillings like jams are often added (injected) after baking.
I want to shape my croissants like a crescent. Why are your croissant not crescent shaped?
According to Raymond Calvel croissants laminated with margarine are formed into the crescent shape, while croissants laminated with butter are left in the straight form. We say, use whichever shape you like best, but do use real (organic) butter!
What do I do to keep baked croissants fresh?
We would advice to put the croissants you do not eat on baking day in the freezer, after they have cooled. For extra flakiness and ‘almost as good as freshly baked’ you can put them into an oven for about 8 minutes at 175°C / 345°F, straight from the freezer.
https://www.weekendbakery.com/posts/facq-frequently-asked-croissant-questions/
It is too bread like inside.
Yours turns out the way it does because your dough and butter are not at the right temperatures when folding so you get your too large of holes and no layers. Also I would venture to say that you do not chill your dough before baking, which also causes the large holes as well as not stretching and rolling your dough will also cause the insides to look like a bread dough rather than a layered croissant.
So many things you are doing wrong. The butter should not be rolled to a 40x30 sheet as that would make it way too thin and therefore hard when refrigerating in between folds. You need to condition the butter with some flour cut in and pounded to make the butter more pliable with the dough thereby preventing the butter from breaking through. The butter when played out onto the dough you are laminating should only take up 2/3's of the dough so that you can do a letter fold (single fold) to fold the butter for #! fold. Then you refrigerate and follow with a double fold, refrigerate and the another double fold, refrigerate, roll out to cut into triangles 6-8"x10-12", then at the bottom of triangle you cut a 1/4" slice in the middle and stretch the triangle so that it ends up looking like an eiffel tower, roll fold the bottom triangle towards the tip making sure to stretch the pastry the whole roll and then tuck the top tip under the roll, refrigerate before baking. You need to be chilling the dough after each turn. A proper croissant takes 2-3 days to make. Patience is key to getting it right. Yours are right out of a horror story!
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Please go back and read what @Fablesable, has stated. Your butter has to malleable. This is usually done by getting after it with a french pin. You beat it until the friction of beating it warms it a bit/ You don't roll the butter in an retard it to make it cold. Your goal it to rest the dough while the developing flour and butter is arriving at the same temperature. At this point the butter should be pliable to roll evenly into dough. folds. If you have the retarder set at a low temp and your using a high fat content then there may be a need to cut in some shortening when beating.
I ideal dough has time to develop the proper properties.gluten. Resting between folds is critical. If you endu breaking of the dough or butter that's just an indication the your dough is not developed properly. I personally don't see a problem with adding a dough conditioner.
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After mixing the dough, retarding it overnight is not proper. Cold dough and cold butter do not blend well. When the dough is mixed, it should chill for just a bit. Then add the malleable butter.
If your butter starts to migrate out as tp leak, dust a bit to contain it.
The resting part, I think is the most crucial. The gluten needs to relax. The laminating/creating layers is also very important. With the relaxed dough and butter between the layers it give the croissants the ability for steaming between the layers and separation. This takes it from the bread world into the flakey pasty world.
https://cheftalk.com/threads/problems-with-croissants.89719/
Croissant dough is similar to puff pastry, as both have many butter layers and rely on steam to puff them up (you may remember this from my puff pastry post.) However, croissant dough is also leavened with yeast, whereas puff pastry is not. This gives the croissants just an extra bit of flavour that makes them irresistible to me.
Whisk milk to dissolve yeast, and then add to flour. Mix the dough, being careful to not over-mix or knead the dough. We aren’t making bread here. If you overdevelop the gluten, you will end up with dough that is difficult to roll out and chewy croissants.
Wrap in plastic and refrigerate 8 hours (or overnight.) I’ve had this dough explode in the fridge more than once so make sure you use several layers of plastic wrap. You’ve been warned.
Use a rolling pin to pound the butter so that it is a bit softer to work with. Once you get it as thin as possible, roll it out into a thin sheet. Work quickly so the butter doesn’t get too soft or begin to melt. I used plastic wrap while pounding the butter and then rolled the butter with flour and wax paper to prevent sticking. If you are finding it difficult to roll out the entire block of butter, you can cut the butter into smaller chunks (approx. 50 g each) and roll them out separately (you will have to make a patchwork with the smaller pieces later on but it will still work.) Transfer the rolled out butter to the fridge to cool until the dough has finished resting.
Once the dough has rested for 8 hours, unwrap and roll out into a rectangle that is approximately the size of an average cookie sheet. You want to use enough flour for rolling so that the dough doesn’t stick, but don’t go overboard. Excess flour can burn during baking.
Lightly brush croissants with egg wash and allow to rise on parchment-lined baking sheets until spongy (30 minutes to 1 hour). Brush one more time with egg wash right before baking. Be careful to not go overboard with the egg wash. Too much egg wash and your croissants will not rise as well and could become too crispy.
Bake for 10 minutes at 400 F (200 C) and then reduce heat to 350 F (175 C) and bake until brown and crispy.
All the layers should be visible inside the croissant.
Croissant Storage
Croissants do not keep for very long (at most 1 day.) They are at their best when freshly baked, otherwise freezing works well too. Wait until croissants are thoroughly cool and store in a ziploc bag with all excess air removed. Remove from freezer and immediately heat in oven at 350 F (175 C) for 3-5 min before serving.
http://bigbaketheory.com/2012/02/20/croissants/
What butter should I use?
French boulangeries use butter that has a high fat content of 85 to 87 percent. For best results use quality butter with a high fat content and no additives or extra water added. European style or imported butters can often be found in specialty grocery stores. For more buttery info, check out this blog article we wrote on French Butter.
What type of flour should I use?
Most French croissant recipes use pastry flour (T45) to produce a croissant with a light, delicate texture. Bread flour or All Purpose can be used to produce a chewier, more sturdy croissant.
Do I have to use Fresh yeast, what if I can only find dry, instant yeast?
Either yeast can be used, but they are not equal. If you replace fresh yeast with dry, for every gram of fresh yeast in the recipe, use ½ gram instant dry yeast.
To what size do I roll out the butter block and the détrempe?
This is a tricky question but a commonly asked concern but there is no exact precise measurement to this step of the croissant making process. What is important is to make sure the détrempe is not rolled too thin (no less then 1cm thick) before adding the butter block, that the block of butter is at the correct proportion to the détrempe, and the pâton is always rolled to the same thickness between each turn. Refer back to the diagram on the recipe page or the step-by-step pictures below. Both can be used as a guide to see the proportions of the butter to the détrempe.
We use two different methods at our school for adding the butter block. For the first method as seen in the school recipe sheet diagram, prepare your détrempe and roll it out to a long rectangle then prepare your butter block to cover about 2/3 of the détrempe (it will be roughly the size of a piece of paper that has been folded in half). Make sure the butter is rolled our evenly and fully within the lines of the détrempe with about a 1/2cm border of dough. Place the butter block in the bottom 2/3rds of the détrempe, fold the end that is dough only over the butter (it will come to about the middle of the butter), then the other side of the dough (this side you are folding the butter block and dough) to cover.
For the second method, refer to the diagram below. You are wrapping the butter up with dough, almost like a present! A delicious present of butter that is!
My butter is squishing out/escaping during the rolling!
Make sure the pâton has been rested long enough and that the butter is not too warm or it can start to melt out. Also make your work surface is sufficiently floured; if the détrempe sticks too much it can tear and create holes where the butter can leak out. If the dough is too warm, stick it in the fridge for a couple of minutes before continuing. It also helps to work on a cold surface like granite or marble.
What if my dough looks like it has little lumps of butter in it, or butter looks like it has broken up under the détrempe?
This happens when the pâton has been rolled out when the butter was too cold. Before completing the next turn, let your pâton rest outside the refrigerator for just a few minutes to let the butter soften a little. The butter needs to still be cold, but it also needs to be pliable so it will spread smoothly with the détrempe.
What are the final dimensions that I roll my dough to before forming the croissants?
This depends and is entirely up to you! The most important point is that your dough should be about 3-5mm thick. First plot out what you are thinking about making and then roll the dough to the size that will work best.
In our croissant classes, we are making several different shapes from one piece of dough. For the recipe we use, the dough rolls out perfectly to be the size of one of our baking sheets which is 40x30cm or 16x12 inches. Of course this size will depend though on the amount of dough you have depending on the recipe you use, so follow rule #1 of rolling the dough to be about 3-5mm thick.
If you are just going to make croissants, roll the dough to be the height of the triangle you want to work with, about 9 inches or 20cm is a good starting point. The base of the triangle will vary as well depending on how large or small you want your croissants to be (a good start is about 3in or 8cm).
For pain au chocolat, we use the chocolate sticks as a guide and form with rectangles that are about 15cm by 8cm (3x6in).
Don't forget that the scrapes can certainly be used! They should be layered on top of one another then rolled out as to not lose those layers. A fun idea is to cut them into strips, brush with melted butter and sprinkle with cinnamon sugar before twisting and baking into delicious snacks!
How long can croissants be kept in freezer?
Croissants can be frozen up to 2 months. This can happen at two stages during the process, as a pâton or after they have been shaped. They should be kept in an airtight container or plastic storage bag to maintain freshness.
How do I bake the croissants from frozen?
Allow to thaw in the fridge overnight, proof 1 to 2 hours, or until they jiggle like Jello when the pan is shaken. For best results, spray with water a couple of times during the proofing process. Brush with egg wash and then pop them in the oven!
A Few Last Tips and Pointers:
Croissants need time and patience, it is best to not be in a rush.
Chill it! Maintaining the détrempe and pâton chilled and giving it time to rest (at least 30 mins in the refrigerator) between the various stages of tourage is essential. The butter is also very sensitive to temperatures and considering the quantity, it’s best to keep it cold, if not it’ll begin to melt and “ooze out” of the dough and result in “uneven” layering
Make sure butter is cold, but pliable. It is important that the butter spreads evenly for good.
Croissants are sensitive to heat throughout the entire process. If your kitchen is hot, they will proof faster but make sure it is not too hot that the butter melts out of the croissants before baking. If your kitchen is on the cooler side, your croissants may take longer to proof, but they will get there!
Croissant dough can be used to make so many different things. Roll with cinnamon sugar for a flaky take on cinnamon rolls, or flavored pastry cream or jam! Of course a piece of chocolate or two never hurts. :-)
https://lacuisineparis.com/blog/croissant-cheat-sheet
Problem six: I’m making croissants and instead of a flaky finish, they’re more bread-like.
Richard's solution: Bready croissants usually happen because the butter that has been carefully folded between your layers of pastry has melted and soaked into the uncooked dough, creating an enriched bread dough instead. This is still pretty nice, but definitely not a croissant. When making the puff for a croissant, there can be no cutting corners – you can only do a maximum of two folds on your dough before returning it to the fridge to chill down. If you’re not confident in your rolling, or are in a really hot kitchen, it's best to chill between every roll.
There is also a limit to how many folds you can do, even if you do chill your dough correctly – any more than seven and the butter will become too thin and melt back into your dough. Lastly, once you’ve painstakingly made your dough, cut it, rolled it and laid it out to prove, don’t put it in the airing cupboard or the butter will melt again. Prove the croissants at room temperature until they are nice and big, then whack them in the oven. They’ll come out lovely.
https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/howto/guide/baking-sos-how-rescue-10-common-pastry-problems-richard-burr
DAY 1: On the night, at about 7PM, of day 1, do these steps:
Step 1: Because we use fresh yeast in my recipe, first we have to dissolve the yeast into cold milk. You will have a hard time dissolving in cold environment so you may need to weight and dissolve it first in about 10ml of warm milk, and then pour the rest of the cold milk into the yeast mixture. If you use different yeast like dry or instant, activate it according to the manufacturer instructions, then add them into the remained cold milk.
Step 2: Weight flour, sugar, and salt into a same mixing bowl, give them a whisk or three to combine.
Step 3: Then make a well in the middle and pour in the milk – yeast mixture. Cooperate them using a hand mixer-hook attachment, or stand mixer with a dough hook (like me), or using hand (I’ve been here too, believe me, take a bit more time and the result is the same) for about 3 minutes in low speed (and 5 to 7 minutes by hands), until it come together as a kind-of smooth dough, you don’t want them to be extremely smooth and pliable (technically saying, fully gluten development).
After that, add the soft butter into the dough, bit by bit. The reason why adding butter later, that I have just recently discovered, is that adding fat with other ingredients in the very beginning will make it harder, take longer, but not impossible to knead the dough to sufficient gluten development. So, if you add it early you will find yourself (or your machine) doing more kneading than adding it later. Good for your arm muscle building, but not any good for the bread. Why is that? It is because the action of kneading oxidizes the flour over time, the more you knead, the more oxidized the dough will be, and this oxidization negatively affects the crumb, color and flavor of your hard-worked bread.
What you trying to achieve should look like this picture of mine: medium gluten development dough that can be stretched out to thin sheet but still tore quite easily.
Step 4: At this stage, most recipe call for a fermentation of 1 to 2h and then toss it in the fridge. I never have enough time, nor patience to wait that long, and my recipe have the dough overnight to proof in the fridge after lamination. Therefore, what I do right after mixing it is that I put the dough on a plastic wrap, spread it with my rolling pin until it reach the size of about 25cmx12cm rectangle, put another plastic wrap on the dough to keep it moist, and place it in the fridge for about 1 hour.
It is a very important step, letting your dough rest and chill, because if you don’t do that, the gluten in the dough will not have time to relax and loosen up, it then will fight back very forcefully when you try to incorporate the butter into the dough in the next steps, and you will lose to the gluten strength, miserably, trust me. So please do have patience with this.
Step 6: Now is my fun part of the croissant making. Cover the butter with another plastic wrap and use a rolling pin to slam it real hard into a thin sheet of 12x15cm. This is a great stress reliever and a sweet little revenge, just like hand kneading bread dough. Imagine the butter as the face of an annoying person, hold your rolling pin up very firmly, and BAM, BAM, BAM, smash it sincerely with all your strength, please. After this exercise, you will have a thin sheet of cold butter like this; make sure the corners are square.
Except for the stress relieving effect, this step is very meaningful for croissant dough making because it will plasticize the butter, technically make it pliable, and easier to be evenly distributed in the dough in the laminating process. You know your butter is well plasticized when it is still cold and hold it shape, while you can easily bend it over the bench without any cracking. Like this.
Proceed with the next step immediately. Make sure the softness of the dough and the butter are at the same level.
https://simplyafoodblog.wordpress.com/2012/05/08/croissant-and-everything-laminated-my-revised-recipe-for-beginners-my-croissant-chronicle-part-1/
Many people who bake regularly say they prefer the French rolling pin to other types because you get a “feel” for the dough better, hence more precise control over the dough.
What a French rolling pin also does differently is to flatten the center of what you are rolling before it flattens the edges. If you use a cylinder normal rolling pin, all surfaces get flattened at the same time, and if you tilt it at all, an edge will get much thinner than the center. With a French pin, it is much easier to avoid edges that are too thin, and this is why I chose and love it.
4. The English lock-in Method – In the last batches, I always used the French method to block my butter inside the dough. I thought that it was the only way to do that back then. But before baking this batch, I did some research about butter locking technique and came across the English method. I decided to try it on this batch. It worked like a charm. The English method in my opinion is more tolerant toward home baking because the dough and butter layers are thinner and arranged already at the beginning. Thus, it will be easier apply the laminating technique. This method also creates more initial layers than the French Method, which will reduce the turn-and-fold times to minimal.
1. Not enough gluten development – As you can see in the pictures below, my croissants are a bit on the flat side. This means that the gluten strains in my dough were not strong enough kept the round shape when its volume expanded continuously inside the oven during baking. This made the dough expand length-wise (horizontally) rather then height-wise (vertically), which is not so pretty. 😦
So I suggest that you follow my instruction on how to knead the dough and how strong it should be, here in my previous post – a croissant recipe for beginners.
2. The croissants were too brown – I baked these at 220 degree Celsius, for almost 18 minutes. I intended to bake them for 20 minutes, but at 18, they were too brown that I was afraid that they would get burned, so I took them out, fortunately.
There are 2 combinations of oven temperature and baking time that I found most successful so far in my croissant chronicle: 200 degree – 20 minutes, and 220 degree – 7 minutes + 175 degree – another 10 minutes. So I would suggest either of them to you.
3. Not a very well prepared batch – you might not believe this, but I was too into taking picture that I totally forgot to preheat my oven. This mistake prolonged my final proofing time another good 20 minutes (Thank God, I have a small oven!), made those croissants a bit over-proofed. You can see that also contribute to flat croissants. 😦 So please, do not be absent-minded like me when it comes to baking.
What changes did I make in this first successful batch?
No bulk fermentation + cold ingredients – many recipes I came across on the Internet ask for some bulk fermentation after kneading the dough for 1 to 2 hours at room temperature. In my opinion, it’s not suitable for home bakers. Bulk fermentation does strengthen the dough gluten structure and improve the quality of the croissants in flavor. However, with long bulk rising time, I am taking a risk of over fermenting my croissants, which would cause the final proof and oven spring to be weak, plus it may sour the taste of the croissants. Furthermore, when the dough warm up to the room temperature, it will take lots of time in the fridge to cool it down in order to cooperate the cold, plasticized butter in.
Therefore, I decided not to perform bulk fermentation. Instead, first I used cold liquid (water and milk) to make the dough, and then I put it into the fridge for a good 1 to 2 hours. Also, I tried to prolong the resting time between each turn and folds to 1 hour to prevent the dough from getting to tight and fighting back. To improve the flavor of the croissant, I use overnight resting in the fridge after all the turns and folds.
As a conclusion, I would like to summarize some important tips and lessons I learned after many takes of pursuing a perfect croissant:
Use cold ingredients + no bulk fermentation.
Knead your dough to sufficient gluten development.
Plasticized your butter probably.
Pay attention to corners and edges when dealing with croissant dough. Trim all the imperfect edges.
Rest the dough! Let them rest! And then rest, some more! Allow for more patience than you think you need.
Keep your working bench, kitchen, hands, utensils, and dough cool when performing lamination. Work COLD!
Croissants hate warmth! They hate it so much; they could die! So, don’t proof warmer than 25 degree Celsius!
Use camera to capture the raise of your croissants in the final proofing. NO bare eyes please, unless you have super memories.
Don’t under-proof, nor over-proof your croissants. Watch them closely! They have to be soft and able to jiggle when you shake the tray. The layers will be very obvious at the end.
Practice! Practice! And practice!
https://simplyafoodblog.wordpress.com/2012/05/10/croissants-ans-everything-laminated-part-2-my-croissant-chronicle-how-it-all-began-lessons-and-tips-learned/
I have this problem with most of my doughs: they're very elastic when shaping my loaves. It gets very problematic when I have to roll it out (with a rolling pin) to shape things like cinnamon buns, or croissants (which totally break since the dough's way too elastic). I mix and knead by hand all the time and I always take care to develop gluten as much as I can, so I'm thinking it may be the problem. I've also read that too much flour may produce this effect, but since I'm using tested recipes, I know it's not that.
What do any of you think? Overkneading? Something else?
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A poolish used as preferment should help you to relieve the elasticity a bit .Mixing it with some weaker flour or adding some lard or margine should help, too.
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The usual answer is: Let the dough rest for ten minutes.
When you're working it (stretching it out, rolling it out, any time you're trying to make it take a shape of any kind) you should start it in the right direction after it's had a rise (so it's been resting for an hour or so) and then when it starts to fight you and try to spring back, let it rest 10 minutes. Then work it some more, and if it starts to fight you again before you have gotten it to final shape, let is rest again.
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When I first read your post, I thought you meant that your dough stretched out too easily and wouldn't hold it's shape but after re-reading the original post and the responses, I think I had it backwards.You are saying that it resists stretching out and you have to fight with it to get it to stretch out flat. Easy solution already stated by amolitor-rest the dough.
I ball my dough and then lightly flatten into a thick disk on a floured surface.
Rest 10-20 minutes. Cover so it doesn't dry out.
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Gently start pulling into a larger,flatter,thinner disk( or rolling). The minute it starts resisting-stop and rest the dough.Cover to prevent drying.
The extra time is worth it-it is very aggravating working with a resistive dough and just raises my blood pressure.
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/19802/my-doughs-are-very-elastic-reasons