Let's Make a Croissant Recipe!

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Let's not waste any more time. Let's move right along to our Croissant Recipe.

Ingredients

1 ounce fresh yeast
3 1/2 cups flour, unbleached all purpose (approximately)
1/3 cup sugar
2 teaspoons salt
1 cup milk, approximately

Butter
4 1/2 sticks unsalted butter-1 lb 2 oz -- cold-cut into 1/2 inch chunks
2 tablespoons flour, unbleached all purpose

Croissants

1 recipe-croissant dough -- well chilled
Flour -- for rolling dough
1 large egg

Method: Dough

Fit a dough hook onto your mixer bowl, and add the yeast, flour, sugar sald and one cup milk. Using the lowest speed possible, mix for somewhere between one and two minutes. A soft, moist dough will form on the hook. Add more milk, a wee bit at a time if the dough seems too dry. Be sure all the flour is moistened, so check carefully and stop adding as soon as you reach this point. With the mixer stopped, inspect the bottom of the bowl. If there is a bit of flour there, add a drop or two of milk.

Now turn the mixer on high and mix until the dough is smooth and elastic. It should take about four minutes for the dough to become the consistency of soft butter. Stop and iremove the dough after three minutes. Inspect this and return any plum sized pieces to the bowl and mix until fully blended. The dough is ready when these pieces come together.

Remove the dough. Wrap it in plastic then put it in a plastic bag. Leave a little room for it to expand. Let the dough sit out at room temperature for thirty minutes, then refrigerate for eight hours or more. Overnight is fine.

Method Butter

Using your nixer's paddle blade, and with the machine set to the highest speed, beat the butter and flour together. Beat for about two minutes, or until it resembles the croissant dough in consistency. Poke around to be sure the butter and flour are evenly blended. Squash any lumps between your fingers.

Push the butter onto a piece of plastic wrap, slapping it down to remove air bubbles. Shape it into an oval that is about one inch in thickness and perhaps five or six inches long. Wrap it up and put it in the refrigerator until you need it.

Assembly

You need a large work surface. Marble is perfect because it keeps the mixture cold better than other surfaces. You will need to work quickly and keep this as cold as possible.

Flour your work surface and sprinkle the top of the croissand dough with flour as well. Use a long rolling pin. Agai

Perhaps you've heard the wonderful story about the origins of the croissant recipe. As the story goes, a Budapest baker, back in 1686, was working late one night. This was during the time when the Turks and the Hungarians were having at one another. Anyway, the baker heard noises that night and notified the city's miliary officials. They discovered that the Turks were trying to dig a tunnel under the city's wall. The baker had saved everyone's skin.

In return, he asked for the sole right to bake a crescent shaped pastry that commemorated his peoples' victory. The cresent is the symbol of Islam, so apparently this signified that the Hungarians had devoured the Turks.

Heartwarming as this story is, there's not a word of truth to it.

According to OChef (www.ochef.com) the croissant showed up in France in the very early nineteen hundreds.

The Hungarian story is so much better.