Croissants with Yeast

Notes to myself

Recipe

The previous batch was a bit too dry. My goal was to make a richer, more moist product:

• Increased liquid from 46% to 48% (120 g)
• Used 50% milk, 50% water
• Increased butter from 125g to 150g

The previous bad had a quite stark yeast smell that I don’t like.

• Reduced yeast from 15g to 11g

Bulk proof

The bulk proof appeared to be slower. After 1 hour, the dough was puffed up, but not as much as in the previous batch. This might have two reasons:

• less yeast
• lower temperature of the liquid (previously it was 100% warm water, but this time the milk was cold)

I stopped the bulk proof after one hour. The advantage: the dough is less puffed and easier to handle later. Disadvantage: less yeast multiplication.

Lamination (343)

I tried to use as little flour as possible. The dough was nice, silky, clean.

Lockin

• Slightly larger butter: 17 x 15

Fold #1

• Double fold
• Water spray
• Freezer for 10 minutes
• Fridge for 30 minutes

Fold #2

• Single fold
• Water spray
• Freezer for 10 minutes
• Fridge for 120 minutes

Pre-roll

Rolled with the silicon mat. That means that I could roll without any flour. The rolling takes more time. For freezing, I covered the dough with a black reusable plastic baking foil.

Morning

• Turned on the oven lamp and added a bowl of warm water. That increased the humidity to 70%+ and temperature to 28 °C
• Rolled on the silicon mat with a lot of turning and flipping
• No dusting flour
• I was not able to roll the dough thin enough with that technique. The final dough was about 8mm thick.
• Stretched the croissants a bit, but not too much because of elastic recoil

Proofing

• I sprayed the croissants with water
• I opened the pre-warmed oven to move in the croissants, but forgot to place them on the baking rim. So I had to close the oven and open it again. When I then finally moved the croissants to the oven, the temperature dropped to 25 °C.
• I left the lamp on for a while. Eventually the temperature reached 26.5 °C but dropped again.
• Humidity was about 85% so I had to open the oven after 1 hour to remove the water bowl.
• After 2 hours the croissants were not fully proofed. They were proofed, some layers separated, but they were still fairly small in size.
• I baked anyway, because I wanted to eat breakfast.

Result

• Ugly shape
• Interesting crust with very visbile layering
• Nice contrast between egg washed glossy layers and dry drifted layers
• Nice crumb with very nice outer areas that were better proofed than the inside
• Underproofed
• Slightly yeasty smell
• More butter, richer
• Crispy and buttery
• Perfect gluten development. Transparent, plastic like layers. Nothing I had achieved before.
• Great result overall, even though the dough was rolled “too thick” and they looked ugly and were underproofed.