Homemade Croissants Recipe

Hey, I'm John Kanell, and today on Preppy Kitchen, we're making some buttery, flaky homemade croissants. So let's get started. We're starting off this recipe with 2 1⁄3 of a cup of warmed whole milk. 80 to 90 degrees is great. To the milk, I'm adding a tablespoon of granulated sugar to give our yeast some food to eat. They're gonna be hungry. And now we're gonna add one envelope or 2 1⁄4 teaspoons of active dry yeast, not instant. Give this a stir, and we're gonna set it aside for five to 10 minutes, or until the yeast is nice and foamy. These croissants have steps. This is not in the quick and easy recipe. This is, I wanna challenge. I wanna make something and have a sense of accomplishment. So I wanna tell you right now, do not use yeast that is bad for this recipe because it'll be very sad. It won't turn out nicely. You wanna see a nice foamy head, and if it doesn't have a nice foamy head, start over again with a new packet of yeast. While this rises, I'm gonna set that aside and measure out my flour. For this recipe, you'll want four cups or 480 grams of all-purpose flour. This is one of my most requested recipes. I'm so excited to share it with you. A proper croissant is a beautiful laminated dough. So you have layers of a yeast-leavened dough with butter. Butter, butter dough, butter dough, butter dough, and we're gonna make these pages. But first, we have to make our dough. And when you're doing that, you wanna have the correct amount of flour. So using a scale is definitely the best practice. If you don't have one, don't scoop the flour. Sprinkle it into your measuring cup and level it off. You don't wanna pack it in. For some contrast, we're adding 2 1⁄2 teaspoons of salt. One, two, and a half. And for a kiss of sweetness, but more importantly, some softness to the dough, I'm gonna add the remaining three tablespoons of granulated sugar. Whenever you add sugar to a dough, you're gonna get a more delicate texture. It'll become more cakey, if you will. Our scale's done, so grab a whisk, and we're gonna mix it up. By the way, if you like my videos, go ahead and hit that subscribe button. There's two new recipes every single week. Once you make this recipe, you're gonna see that it's actually not that hard to make a proper laminated dough, and you'll have a world of pastries open up to you. There's so many different things you can do with a lovely laminated dough. Okay, nice and mixed up. Grab your stand mixer, and we're just waiting to have some beautiful foamy yeast. We're using milk and not water here, so the yeast does have to work a little bit harder, and it needs some more time. My yeast has bloomed nicely, and it's time to add 1⁄2 cup of cold water right in. I'm gonna add this right in. For this recipe, you'll wanna use European butter, not the regular American-style butter. European butter will be softer, more yellow in color usually, and the main difference is it's a higher fat content, so it's perfect for this, as opposed to the American-style, which has a little bit more water in it. So that's four tablespoons, or 1⁄4 cup, of very softened European butter, and I microwaved this because it was a little too firm at room temperature. We're gonna pop our dough hook on and mix this up. Low speed for about a minute, or until the dough is shaggy and coming together. By the way, you have a choice here. You can start this recipe in the morning and finish it in the evening, but this is a breakfast pastry, so it's more traditional, I think, to have it broken up over two days. You start the dough on one day, and you finish it in the morning. In addition to the time management of it all, the overnight rest time will give the gluten some time to relax, while still keeping the butter nice and cold. The enemy here is heat, because if you're making this on a hot summer day, and your air conditioning is broken, it's basically impossible to keep the butter cold enough to keep those pages separated. You want that nice lamination, which requires a thin, cold layer of butter. My dough's balled up really nicely. I have some structure developing, and now we're going to shape it. So, our mixer's done. Grab a good length of plastic wrap. Turn the dough onto the plastic wrap. I'm gonna pat this into a square shape now, and your dough should be about a half inch thick. So, I'm gonna wrap this tightly now, and refrigerate it for half an hour. This will let the dough rest and relax a bit, so it's more easy to handle. In the meantime, we're gonna make our butter pat. It's the other half of the croissant. While our dough's chilling, grab one and a quarter cup of cold European butter, and just let it hang out on the countertop for about 15 minutes to warm slightly. If you're not used to using this butter, it gets softer much quicker than a regular butter. It's the higher fat content. This part of the recipe, which is pure butter, is called the beurrage. Beurre is butter in French, and I have a horrible accent, so please don't criticize. We're gonna cut two pieces of parchment paper into 12 by 12 inch squares. And repeat. Once that's done, it's time to cut your butter. So, we're gonna cut tablespoon-sized pieces, and you should have 20 pieces for 20 tablespoons. If you're working in a commercial bakery, this would be fairly automated. You'd have machines to help you out, but we're gonna do it by hand the old-fashioned way. Now we're gonna lay these out into a four by five grid, right in the center of the parchment. My tablespoons are not perfect, but that's totally okay. Push them together. Okay, that's good. For the next step, you'll want a rolling pin, and probably a bench scraper or a big knife. Cover your butter up with your parchment paper, and you're gonna roll and pound it into a thin sheet. You'll have a 10 inch square that's about an eighth of an inch thick. After you've pounded it a bit, you can roll, and if you have a rolling pin with bumpers, that could be very handy for you. Some of the butter's gonna start coming apart, so periodically, you can lift the parchment paper off, and just kind of scooch it back in place. If this is looking really lumpy, you can scrape and smooth the top, but so far, this looks pretty nice. Back on, and more rolling. You can cheat a little bit if things are getting kind of out of shape. A lot of people watch the channel kind of just to relax, and I get that. It's very relaxing to watch people do some work, but they don't have the intention of making this recipe. If you're watching this video, let me know in the comments if you actually plan on making this, or you're just vaguely curious about the process. Paper back on, and we'll continue. Okay, we're getting close. This is actually better to do on a cold countertop. When you're doing this step, your butter's gonna become softer as you work it, but it should still be cool to the touch. If things are warming up, lift it up, and it goes right into the fridge to cool out. Cool down. Your butter's going to want to make a circle, so you might be kind of cutting and piecing things in to keep that square shape. The shape is actually quite important. As you develop a better technique, you'll find this becomes easier and easier, but don't be afraid to just piece things in. Here, the only thing that matters is the end result. Okay, we're getting so close. So we have a 10 by 10-ish inch square-ish shape. That looks good to me. I'm gonna cover this back up, and this goes into the refrigerator for 10 minutes to chill a bit, but not harden. So don't leave this in for an hour. It's really about 10 minutes, just so it kind of gets some of its strength back. Everything's rusted and chilled, so now we're gonna lightly flour our surface, and I'm using a pastry mat today just because it really helps for things not sticking. Place it onto your counter. I'm gonna lightly flour the top as well, as well as my rolling pin. And this will get rolled out into a 10 by 20-inch rectangle. Once it's rolled out, it should be about 1 1⁄4 of an inch thick. You can kind of lift it up, too, which helps corral it back into shape. Today, we're making a basic butter croissant, a basic butter croissant. As you get more comfortable, you can begin adding fillings and flavorings. Well, well, well, after just a little bit of rolling, we have a 20 by 10-inch rectangle, and I can just pat this back into a nice rectangular shape. No rounded corners for us. This looks great. If you need to, sharpen up the corners. You can brush any flour off the top. There should be none left over. And make sure the long side is facing you. I took my butter out just a couple minutes ago, and at this point, it's nice and cool, but it won't crack when I bend it, so you can give it a little test. And if it cracks, leave it on the countertop for three to five more minutes. If not, you're ready for the next step. We're gonna lift it up and flip this butter side down onto the center of our dough. Now, lift your parchment paper off. Now, you're gonna fold the dough over so it meets in the middle. If it shrinks back, just pull it out a little bit. Pinch that center seam together so it doesn't disconnect. Now, we're gonna be very gentle and just roll with a rolling pin to make sure everything's nice and connected. One more set of pinches. So here, we're going to make sure our butter is fully sealed in. You want everything to look kind of perfect, even at this stage, so grab a bench scraper or a big knife, and just square up the sides. Especially on the pinched edges, things might have gotten a bit lumpy. Gonna lightly flour the top. I'm using a pastry mat, so I know nothing will stick to it. If you're rolling things out on your countertop, you should add a little bit more flour, too. The height is fine. The width needs to increase, so keep it at 10 inches high. We want 18 inches long. Nice, even force here, because we don't want really anything to rip open. And we're being slow because there's a thick layer of butter that's not moving as fast as the dough here. I see there's a little air bubble right at the edge here. I don't want that to continue, so I'm gonna pierce it and just push the air out, then pinch it back together. So at the moment, I have one layer of butter, two layers of dough, and everything is really thick. You want to have a ton of layers. Think of those croissants that you buy at a nice bakery. They have all these layers to them. So this will only happen by rolling and folding and rolling and folding and rolling and folding until you've worked up those beautiful layers. You'll notice for this part, I'm using a straight rolling pin. So important, and it's gonna be much easier if your rolling pin is fairly long. The shorter ones, or a French one which is tapered, which I love for making pie dough, for example, is not gonna be great for this. So find your straightest, longest rolling pin for the easiest set of rolls. And if you're looking at this thinking, ha ha ha, no, I don't like this at all, I'm not gonna do this, I understand. And you can click up here for my how to make rough puff video, which is kinda like the cheap version of a laminated dough. It's much easier and you get a similar effect, but not the same. Keep rolling out. A little bit of rolling later and we have an 18 by 10 inch rectangle, so we're ready for the next step. Chances are that your edges are a little bit lumpy and I know for sure that there is a gap on either edge where the butter is not, but the dough is. So we're gonna trim this up. If you had any excess flour, just always brush that off. We never want flour before we fold because that'll prevent the sticking. It's time for our first fold. So imagine that you're folding a piece of paper to fit into an envelope. This should be divided into thirds and you're gonna fold this over. There we go. This is why a pastry mat comes in so handy. Now, you wanna grab a baking sheet, line it with parchment paper, and we're gonna transfer the dough right over. That's the easiest way for me. Grab a bench scraper and we're just going to neaten the edges up. I want a nice, beautiful rectangle. Cover this tightly with plastic wrap and this goes into the fridge for half an hour. Every time you work with this, the butter starts getting dangerously soft. So in between each step, we're gonna pop this into the fridge to chill out. The gluten in the dough will rest, the butter will firm up, and our next step will be easier. This marks the end of my first turn. There are four turns in total. Into the fridge you go. After half an hour of chill time, lightly flour your surface once again. And even though I'm using a pastry mat here, which is not sticky, I want the dough to roll evenly, meaning it's not gonna be forced apart. It's gonna just spread nicely. Unwrap your dough. Lightly flour the top as well. What's important here is to keep the short side short and the long side long. So we're gonna roll this back out into a 10 by 18 inch rectangle, just being sure that we're not trying to change the orientation of the shape. And you're allowed to move things around. Just like when you're making a pie crust, you wanna keep it moving so you are sure that nothing's getting stuck. If you see any air bubbles, you can try and force them out of the side. And then just check the dimensions every once in a while. This recipe is a Virgo's dream. Right, this looks pretty good. It's 18 by 10. And if you need to, you can kind of just scooch things around so the lines are more straight. If the short ends look really bad, you can give them a trim. Otherwise, I would just kind of pat and scooch as needed. You do not wanna cut the long sides because here's the deal. When this bakes, some parts have to be sealed. Otherwise, you'll have leakages of butter that are unfortunate. Just gonna mark off my thirds. Six. If there's any extra flour on the top, you're going to remove that just like you did before. Fold it over. I have some extra flour on the bottom so I'm just gonna brush that off. And now fold the other edge over. Giving it the lightest of rolls and just a little straighten. Now we can return this to our parchment lined pan. Recover it in plastic. If you have waxed cloth, you could use that as well, by the way. And we'll refrigerate another 30 minutes and repeat this all over again. We're halfway through the folding. Lightly sprinkle your surface once again for our third roll. We are just building up layer after layer here. Lightly flour the top. Lightly flour your rolling pin and another 10 by 18 inch rectangle is in our future. And remember, you can feel free to keep moving things along. Square it up as you move along. And by the way, you can click up here for my Paris bakery tour part one. I'll put links to both in the description box below. In part two, I examine some of the best croissant in Paris. And yes, these are a morning pastry. You would never try and order a croissant in the afternoon. Otherwise, you'd be corrected. So really what we're doing here is just building up layer after layer of laminated dough. And honestly, once you do this recipe a few times, you will not be at all frightened of it. Actually, even after the first time, you'll be like, this is so much easier than I thought it was. Are there a lot of steps? Yes, there are a lot of steps. This is not a quick and easy recipe like apple muffins. But is it technically really difficult? Not really. As long as you bought the right butter, your kitchen is a regular temperature, like not super hot, not icy cold, you should be fine. 18 by 10, we are ready to fold. Squaring it off. Give it a fold. Then a brush. I don't want any excess flour here. And another fold. Just gonna give this the lightest of rolls before I pop it back into the fridge. I just wanna encourage a better connection through community building and rolling pins. Back onto your parchment paper. Our plastic wrap goes back on top. And this goes back into the fridge for another half hour. And our final fold. So close. Out of the fridge. Another light dusting of flour. A little more flour on top. And once again, we're rolling into a 10 by 18 inch rectangle. If you see any butter kind of starting to pop out at either of the sides, the long or the short, use a bench scraper and just press it back in. That'll happen because the butter cools down the fastest on the edge. And as you roll, you're moving a little solid piece of butter out, which could pop out. That's not good. Okay, just a little bit of rolling later. I have a 10 by 18 inch rectangle. And I can give it a final fold. What's easy to forget here is that we're using a yeasted dough. So even though we're so focused on this being like layers of butter and dough, this is yeasted and there will be a rise, which will help give you that puffy, lovely texture. Last brush, just any excess flour goes away. Fold into thirds, removing excess flour again. And my last fold. Just patting this down ever so gently. Wrap your dough tightly in plastic, and we're gonna refrigerate this overnight or for up to 18 hours. When we come back, this'll be ready to finish. It's a new day. My dough's been resting overnight, and you can see it puffed considerably. Luckily, my yeast were working even though it was cold and dark. You wanna lightly flour your countertop now. And I'm again using a pastry mat because I don't want anything to stick. This dough feels so soft and puffy now. We're gonna dump this out without the plastic onto our countertop. And I'm also gonna dust the top of this. We're gonna start off nice and gentle. I'm looking for pockets of air. Like, that's a pocket of air. If you see a pocket of air, just pierce it. Good. If you notice any tearing of the dough, rewrap and let it sit on the countertop for five minutes just to warm up a bit more. After some initial pressing, you can now begin rolling. Gently at first. We're gonna roll this out to a 12 by 28 inch rectangle. So, it's gonna be big. Let's try and keep it in a rectangular shape. And if you notice things are sticking, add a little bit more flour. At this point in the recipe, you're really on easy street. But you wanna make sure that nothing goes wrong with your precious laminated dough you spent so much time on. If I made fresh homemade croissants for you and my praises were not being sung, I'd be horrified. I'd be like, oh my God, this took quite a while. I hope you like them. Your dough should be nice and pliable and stretchy after resting overnight. But you will see some pullback. My dough is looking pretty nice and silky. If your dough cracked or tore, not the best thing. So, what you wanna do is brush lightly with water, pinch it back. You wanna re-encase that butter with the dough. And then, cover with plastic and let it rest for five minutes. Then, keep rolling. We're nearly there. Got some rolling to do. Really worrying about the length as the height is gonna be much easier. 28 by 12, we are ready to cut. I'm gonna mark this off in four inch increments starting at the bottom left. On the top left side, we're gonna measure out two inches. And then, from that two inch mark, every four inches. Our very fancy pastry croissants are just triangles of dough that are rolled up. This is making those triangles. So here, grab a knife or a pastry cutter and we're gonna begin cutting. This is scrap. I'm gonna save it because every bit of this recipe needs cherishing. Now, you're just going to arrange from that top point to the bottom four inch mark and make your first proper triangle. Move the ruler and you're gonna keep going. At this point, if your triangles aren't perfect, a little bit askew, doesn't matter. Give yourself some grace. And I would suggest going from the thick end to the point. Otherwise, the pastry tends to roll up on you. If you see anything sticking together, you can pull the triangle a little bit just to create some distance. Something very soothing and methodical about all these precise cuts. Grab three rimmed baking sheets. I also suggest you cover up your precious dough with paper or plastic just while you're working so nothing dries out. We've worked too hard to let it go to waste now. You don't have to, but I'm lining my baking sheets with parchment paper. And now we're going to begin our construction. You're gonna cut about half an inch from the bottom of your triangle, the thick part. We wanna create some more width for them and we're gonna do this by folding and stretching. So create two little triangles like that. My dough is pretty perfect as far as the surface consistency. If there was any flour remaining, brush that away before you begin this. Now we're gonna roll this up and gently pull apart with our fingers as we roll. Just roll, roll, roll. Gentle pressure. And now we can place this onto our baking sheet. As you continue this process, you'll get better and better. Don't worry if the first one doesn't look perfect. So we want the tip facing down and then you can gently maneuver this into a C shape. These will be puffing because there's yeast here and it's now at room temperature. So we're going to give these a lot of space, about six inches in between each one. You'll be able to fit four to six croissants on each sheet tray. Give that a cut, pull those apart, and you can see the little layers of lamination here. And now as we pull from the edge slightly, we're going to roll this up. You're gonna be gentle. Tip side down, just like that. You'll feel more and more confident as you do each of these. Don't worry about these looking as perfect as possible. It's time to roll these up before the butter melts. That's what I'll tell you. As you work, maybe the top is a little bit more dry than the bottom. So you can flip these upside down so they stick a bit better. Okay, we're almost done. You're gonna have three beautiful trays, but these need time to rise and they're super rich. So your yeast are gonna have to work very hard. Hardworking yeast need more time. And just like that, my last croissant, this is actually a scrap, but I was able to roll it out. Goes right on here, a little movement into a C shape. Lightly cover these with plastic. We don't want them to dry out. I'm gonna use a double sheet for each of these baking trays. We're gonna leave these out for two and a half to three hours to rise at about 72 degrees Fahrenheit. It should be like a nice room temperature rise, not too hot so the butter melts, not too cold so it takes forever. Two hours into your rise time, you're gonna preheat your oven to 425, so it is very hot, but don't worry, we'll be reducing the temperature ASAP. First, let's get these risen. Time has passed and as promised, one of the trays is ready, the other ones aren't. I just wanna show you the difference. These guys, puffed. Look at that jiggle. They're ready to go into the oven. It's preheated to 425, but we need to give them an egg wash really quickly. One egg and a tablespoon of heavy cream. Give it a good mix. You wanna give them an egg wash, but you don't wanna seal the cut side, so carefully and gently just add a light egg wash onto the top sides. These are, sorry, these are so nice and jiggly and puffed. These ones are still proofing, so we're gonna give them more time. You're gonna find that of the three, one tray will be ready first, which makes it easy since you probably don't have three ovens at the ready. I'm trying to be careful right now because I really have invested some time in making these croissants for you and I'd like them to be finished nicely, so I'm being very gentle. Proofed, puffed, jiggly, and egg washed. My croissants are ready to pop into the oven. 425, but the moment you close the door, reduce to 375 and you'll bake them for 15 to 20 minutes or until they're a deep golden brown. If you wanna temp these out, the internal temperature should be 190. In you go, and in the meantime, keep an eye on your next ones and start egg washing once they're puffed. Buttery, crisp, and I cannot tell you how proud I am of these little guys. They came out just as I hoped they would. You can see all the layers of lamination. They rose really well. And this, by the way, is the one I made out of the scraps. The rest of them look even nicer. But enough about that, it's time for a bite. These guys are so buttery, flaky, airy, and light. Really a labor of love, a challenge, a project bake, but any way you cut it, they are delicious. I hope you get a chance to try this technically challenging recipe and love it. And if you like my videos, hit that subscribe button and check out my French pastry playlist.