Hand-laminated sourdough croissants, the first batch after a year’s pause.
This post will be really helpful for beginners, because you may face the very same result at first. Just gain this experience and learn from my mistakes.
I gathered my understanding and struggles to make hand-laminated croissants with new ingredients and conditions.
This pastry has a list of critical elements for its success. They are:
- butter (unsalted, fat more than 82%, high plasticity, )
- flour with high protein (13-14%) and gluten strength
- temperature (17-22C while lamination and 26-28C while proofing)
- active, healthy sourdough starter or good-quality yeast
You’ll have an unexpected result if one point from the list is absent.
So, when I decided to return to making croissants, I started with flour and butter.
Ingridients:
1. Flour
I prefer to use Mulino Caputo. I couldn’t find it in Portugal, so I ordered it straight from Italy (ordered from https://vicofoodbox.com/).
For the pastry, I use Manitoba Oro, protein 14%.
2. Butter
I was looking for the President unsalted butter, which I used at home. I didn’t find it in any supermarket. But I don’t want to order it because of the warm weather. So I was looking for an alternative. I found Kerrygold Irish butter, with 82% of fat, high plasticity and rheology. It’s a perfect match ❤️
3. Sourdough
I decided to check my brand-new pasta madre.
Story:
And this is the real beginning of the story 😀
After I refreshed the Pasta Madre and it was time to make a dough (4 hours after the refreshment, t 26C), the leaven actually wasn’t ready for such activity. It was unripe. I knew it but decided to try.
This is the picture of an unripe pasta madre.
Here you can see some clear differences between unripe and ripe starters.
The Unripe starter:
✖️ has strict edges
✖️ looks dense
✖️ feels like a Play Doh 😀
The Ripe starter
✔️ has soft edges
✔️ looks cloudy
✔️ feel bubbles when you touch the surface (the poke test)
I was ready to jump into the adventure of making SD croissants with the unripe starter, because I was going to add fresh yeast. But I forgot to add them 🤦🏻♀️
The dough handling and the butter lamination process.
The dough was easy to handle, even though I kneaded it by hand.
I did the butter lamination at a room temperature of 20C.
Note: After each set of lamination, rest the dough in a fridge for at least 15 minutes. It helps to relax the gluten and cool down the butter. So the following set of lamination will perform easier.
I rolled the croissants and put them in an oven with the light on (to reach the temperature of 26-28C) overnight.
12 hours later, I can hardly see any difference in their size. They were underproofed. This was a moment where I failed my morning coffee with a croissant.
But I still expect to drink my midday coffee with a croissant.
That’s why I let the croissants proof for additional 4 hours and baked them after 16.5 hours of proofing.
The result was eatable even though the croissants had some acidity. We ate them quickly without any hesitations 😉
Conclusions:
To eat your homemade sourdough croissants, you need to take risks.
It’s a win-win.
You’ll gain the experience, or you’ll gain the experience 🏆 and eat croissants 🏆🥐
Recipe:
Thanks, _flour_water_salt for this 100% Sourdough Croissants recipe. It includes a liquid starter (with 100% hydration), but I used a stiff starter for this batch of croissants.
Sourdough Croissants
Equipment
- 1 mixing bowl
- 1 kitchen scales
- 1 reusable bowl cower
- 1 dough scraper
- 1 roller pin
- plastic wrap (clingfilm) to cover the dough to protect it from drying out in the fridge.
- parchment paper
Ingredients
- 100 g levain 100% hydration
- 250 g pastry flour, 13-14 protein
- 20 g unsalted butter 82%
- 30 g brown sugar
- 5 g fine salt
- 90 g whole fat milk
- 30 g water
Butter for lamination
- 130 g unsalted butter
Instructions
Day 1
- Prepare a leaven. Mix flour, water and leaven in proportion 1:1:1 and let it rise for 5-6 hours at 24-26℃.
- When the leaven is ready, mix all the ingredients in a bowl.
- Knead the dough 5 mins until a smooth ball is formed.
- Proof the dough covered at temperature 26° C, 1-2h.
- Then, put the dough covered into the fridge overnight.
Day 2
- Fold a parchment paper in half and measure a rectangle, sized 15×20 cm.
- Cut the butter for lamination (130g) into a rectangle 15×20 cm. Roll out the butter to have the same thickness and cool down in the fridge for at least 1 hour.
First Set of Lamination:
- Take the dough out of the fridge and roll it into a rectangle sized 15×30 cm.
- Take the butter out of the fridge and give it 5 mins to warm up a little bit. Place the butter over ⅔ dough and lock the butter in. Roll out the dough and do a double fold (book fold).
- Cool down and relax the dough for 15 mins in the fridge.
Second Set of Lamination:
- Take the dough from the fridge. Roll out to 25x50cm. Do a single fold (letter fold). Rest 1-2hr in the fridge.
- Roll out 25x60cm. Cut into triangles of 10x25cm, roll into croissants.
- The final proof overnight, t 26-28°C. The Croissants should be cloudy and jiggle when you shake the tray.
Day 3
- Egg wash the croissants before baking. For the eggwash I use 1 quail egg and a table spoon of milk.
- Bake at 180°C for 25 mins using the Convection type of cooking.
- Remove your hand-laminated, 100% sourdough croissants from the oven. Let them cool down a little bit while you're making a cup of coffee.
- Enjoy this moment of pleasure!
This is amazing! Thank you for sharing