I'll Take the Butter Please

Ti's the season...to eat. This year, as we find ourselves consumed by everything holiday related, too many people at the mall and an overabundance of eggnog flavored everything, I think it's safe to assume that those dusty cookbooks and old cookie recipes are finally being put to use. Post Thanksgiving in the Shaver house my husband and I found ourselves bloated, tired and still craving that sweet taste of sugary pie, which is disgusting. Come Sunday morning we were fed up with eating crap and feeling it. We decided then and there to change our ways and naturally went Pinteresting for super healthy, delicious meals. It actually turned out pretty great, considering how much I love food (I mean I went to school for it for goodness' sake). We cut out grains and dairy for the most part and have been loading up on fish, fruits and veggies and, of course, we both feel great. This is how we, as humans, were intended to eat, none of that genetically modified, grown in a factory somewhere, injected with unnatural colors crap. But let's face the music:  everything is just better with butter.  That being said, let me just reminisce about what we had for breakfast on my beloved turkey day. For Thanksgiving I usually partake in the traditional "fast" until right before dinner is ready, as not to ruin my appetite, when I can finally break into the fruit salad and eat all of the good stuff (mandarin oranges, obviously) and sneak a Hawaiian roll or two, but not this year. This year was different. This year I decided to put my pastry skills to good use and make one of the best pastries the French have ever come up with: croissants. The smell of fresh baked pastries filling our little home, warm buttery flakes melting on my tongue, the sound of the first crunch as the croissant is pulled apart, how could I resist? Well, I couldn't and even If I wanted to, that's no way to live! Depriving myself of one of my true loves (a close third behind my husband and Jesus), inconceivable. Likewise, who am I to deprive whoever accidentally stumbles across this sad excuse for a blog via Facebook the buttery goodness of the recipe? And so close to Christmas? I would never!

Making croissants can seem like a daunting task but it is so worth it, as long as you don't mind busting out those arm muscles and having a little lot of patience.

For those strong-willed, determined, brave souls (let's face it, this is not for the faint of heart), here is the mouthwatering, incredibly delicious butter croissant recipe I've picked up and altered over the years:

What you need:
Kitchen Aid stand mixer (5 or 6 qt) with dough hook attachment
whisk
plastic wrap
2 sheet pans
rolling pin
small kitchen scale
pastry wheel (pizza cutter works too)
parchment or wax paper
pastry brush (or new paintbrush)

Ingredients:
7 oz water
1/2 oz active dry yeast
5 oz bread flour (you can substitute all purpose if you must)
2 1/2 oz sugar
3/4 oz salt
12 oz milk
1 1/2 oz water
2 lbs bread flour
1 lb, 4 oz butter, cold

Eggwash:
2 eggs, a little bit of water and a pinch of salt. Put 'em together and what have you got, bippity-boppity-eggwash.

Create a sponge, this means mix your first amount of water, yeast, first amount of bread flour and sugar together in the bowl of your stand mixer and whisk together just until everything is evenly combined (it will be pretty chunky). Cover with plastic wrap and let sit for 30 minutes.

Once the yeast has thrown a party with the sugar and created some nice yeasty bubbles, add the salt, milk, second amount of water and second amount of bread flour into the sponge. Mix on medium speed with the dough hook until the ingredients are just combined, and then another minute or so. You want all of the ingredients in the dough to be evenly incorporated but be careful not to over mix. The dough should be very lumpy.

When the dough is ready, spray a piece of parchment paper or wax paper with pan spray and let the dough rest, covered with plastic wrap, for 1 hour in a cooler area. If you rest the dough for any longer than an hour, refrigerate it.

After the dough is happy and relaxed, shape it and roll it out to about the size of a half sheet pan, wrap it in plastic and refrigerate it over night or at least another hour. The goal is to get the butter and the dough at the same temperature.

Next, remove a stick of butter from it's wrapping and cut it in half, hotdog style (long ways) twice so that you have 4 rectangular pieces of butter, roughly the same size. Do this with every stick of butter. Layer 2 pretty long sheets of plastic wrap and place the butter slices on it to create a rectangular shape. You want the size of the butter to be half the size of the dough. When the butter is ready, place 2 more sheets of plastic wrap on top of it so all of the butter is covered.

Take your rolling pin and go to town, pretend that butter is someone you've been dying to punch. The point of smacking the butter with the rolling pin is to get it into a uniform shape. If the butter is not uniform, chunks will break off when rolling the dough and the butter will not be evenly distributed throughout the croissant. No bueno. Remember to make sure the butter is half the size of the dough. You can roll out the butter as well to get it into the right size/shape.

Remove the plastic wrap and place your dough on a floured surface. Place the beaten up butter on the bottom half of the dough and fold the top over the butter like a book. Leave some room around the edges of the dough. Pinch the sides of the dough to trap the butter in it, this is called enrobing.

This is where the muscles come in. Roll the dough long ways until it has doubled or even tripled in length, then fold the top third of the dough down and the bottom third of the dough over that, so that you have 3 layers total, in the size of a small rectangle or square. This is called a 3-fold. Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes. Repeat this process 2 more times to get a total of 3x3-folds.

Now your dough is ready to shape. Roll it out, yet again, but this time make it pretty thin and keep it rectangular and long, you don't want the dough to be too wide. Take your pastry wheel or pizza cutter and cut the dough into the shape of long triangles and make a little slice in the center of the bottom of the triangle, you should get about 20 out of this recipe. I like to cut my triangles and weigh them to exactly 4 oz so they bake evenly. When triangles are cut, stretch them out and pull the slice on the bottom apart so that the triangle pieces resembles the Eiffel Tower. Roll the triangles, starting with the bottom, until they make the traditional croissant shape.

Preheat oven to 400

When ready, place the croissants onto 2, parchment-lined, sheet pans and brush them with eggwash so they are completely covered. Place a tall glass in the center of the sheet pan and cover with plastic wrap  so that the plastic does not touch the croissants. If possible, place somewhere humid and warm, I usually just put them on top of the stove and let the heat from the oven do the trick. This step is called Proofing and what you're doing is allowing the gasses produced from the yeast to create a light, delicate dough.

Let the croissants sit until fully proofed, depending on the humidity in the air and the temperature, it will take anywhere from 40 minutes to 2 hours. You will know they are proofed by shaking the sheet pan, if the croissants jiggle like jello then they are ready. They will also be spongy if you press your finger against them but try not to touch them too much.

Eggwash the croissants again and place in the preheated oven. Bake for 20 minutes then turn the oven down to 375 and continue baking until done!

Easy peasy lemon squeezey!