Sourdough croissants (inspired by txfarmer)

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kendalm on 7 Jan 2018 at 13:41

Anybody who's seen txfarmers sourdough croissants knows it doesn't get much better so having recently booted another round of stsryers and having a bit of an aversion to sourdough bread (just due to flavor) thought I'd give txfarmers formula a shot.  So far although nowhere near in the ballpark of txfarmer I'm pretty happy and think I may havw found a good challenge.  What I like about the sourdough formula is the added elasticity it seems to provide to dough.  What I have discovered with croissants is that final proofing can often result in the dough tearing especially along the top fold.  I would often see about 1/3 of my croissants rip in the last 30 minutes of proofing which results increally sad croissant.  In this case you can see some nice bulbous loaves here - would love to see the crumb open more but still this is encouraging and the beginnings of hopeful improvement seems to be in the works.  For the record these are the traditional French lamination technique of one double fold and one simple fold which ends up as 12 butter layers and 13 dough layers.  Additionally the butter that folded in is exactly 50% the flour weight.  Last week I decided to give 2 double folds a shot with a little less butter (40%) and was rather disappointed.  With that said it seems fewer layers, generous butter seems to work better.  The o,my regret here was not bakkng on the top rack,as I know thats the hotter zone in my oven and think there would likely have been l a more open crumb but oh well, not upset, a step forward is always rewarding ;)

The thing to watch out for in the first few minutes is the top layer and hoping it shows good signs,of expansion - if it his around a cm in thickness that's usually a good sign - this side view gives a sense of the pop from this bake - again a bit more energy up from I thing these would have gained an addktion 20% or so in spring - 

 

Ya known, anytime I mix up this dough (usually the night before), it smells so good you just wanna eat it raw almost and waiting for the finished product is really hard. Yes it is cruel, there's something about adding butter and sugar to dough that turns it into the most heavenly blob of goodness, so yeah I get it its cruel period !

A little side-note about shaping - there seems to many different dimensions regarding the actual triangle that eventually becomes the rolled up croissant.  Most videos shows bakers forming very long triangles with short base of say 3-4 inches.  I have found that this makes it rather tricky to get the width to a point where there are at least 7 steps on the final croissant.  For that reason I prefer to form and rather wide triangle (5.5 inches by 8 or 9 in height).  The final wet croissant prior to baking will only stand an inch or two off the counter but will at least have 7 steps and form a fairly nice looking croissant.  It a bit annoying when you roll these up and only have 5 steps.  Check out louis lamour's gorgeous croissants here and notice how wide he rolls them - this guy is such a perfectionist - I don't use his formula but man can he bake some incredible works of art - https://youtu.be/409birlmP1s

 

Profile picture for user PalwithnoovenP

PalwithnoovenP on 8 Jan 2018 at 06:20

I wish I could make ones like this in the future. Layers are stuck in my sourdough ones but have little openings when I used instant yeast. You really did a great job!

Any semblance of a croissant would be incredible - dunno how you do it, its amazing you can bake anything and just goes to show how dependent we are on technology. As for layers sticking I have a theory on viennoise pastries and that is that the crumb you see in yeasted laminates is not necessarily caused by the layers separating but more from then fusing (to an extent). Consider puff pastry which rises without yeast - there are usually hundreds of layers and if each only warps just a bit that will translate to rise many fold. In heated laminates we have only a handful of layers each with a few tiny gas cavities that expand and push the layers together as well as warp more dramatically so many of the crumb holes we see are in fact dough bubbles forcing a thin layer of dough into two sheets. Typically I think what we are seeing is skme,of the crumb he's as co2 bubbles and others are zones of separated dough. With tjat in mind I think it helps to think of a croissant as something mkre like a bread whereby open crumb requires some of the same discipline as bread - ie, slow proofing, decent gluten and nice hot oven kick (actual oven or not). Obviously I am still chasing that perfect crumb bit another point to make and this seems to be confirmed by some of the virus is that you don't necessarily need ample layers in fact I did a batch for fun with just 4 layer laminate once and that really opened (too much actually) so going for a modest lamination of just 12 butter layers seems a good target. In case you are laminating to 20+ layers maybe try going easy on folds. Also as many attest butter temperature is critical. I find that I need,to take both dough,and butter slab out of the fridge, and place the butter on the counter for 5 minutes meanwhile put the dough into the freezer for 5 to bring them both to a similar level of softness. If. there's anything k wanna see here it croissants cooked on rocks with full on time lapse !