Egg in croissants | The Fresh Loaf

What's the consensus on egg in croissant dough? Yay or nay? Also, what effect does it have on the croissants? Make them softer?

Here's one of my favorite YouTube boulanger talking about hand made croissants. He doesn't speak directly to the egg question but his point is that industrial croissants even in France have reached a quality that artisan bakers are giving up on making them by hand. He is personally annoyed by this because its not true to the artisan ideas by shopping in factory produced product. What's interesting is his method uses eggs and not only that but also powdered milk which is another one of those should-it-be-used ingredients. You will also notice that he bakes stunning croissant so in my opinion even though its hard to say what the exact character eggs bring to the dough it seems best to follow someone who's this passionate and skilled. Here's the link - its all in French but of you write him and don't speak French he will probably reply in English - https://youtu.be/409birlmP1s

Hello,

I'm a pastry chef and I've been doing a lot of research for an egg company in Paris. So naturally, I have made a lot of tests with laminated doughs containing egg, egg products and just water.

I can tell you that adding whole egg to your dough means your croissant will brown faster with slightly more volume, likely due to the proteins and increased elasticity in your dough, and a more open crumb, irregular crumb. I have been using 17g of whole egg in 600g of dough (2.8%) or 4.9% bakers percentage.

Hope you're still baking croissants!

Cheers

Nothing to do specifically with your reply, and I see that you are a first time commenter. I've been around for the better part of a decade on this site, and one of the things that I so appreciate is exactly what you have done here. Contributed to the collective knowledge base, even years removed from a prior comment or post. It is something that we see here with regularity.

Even well know persons in the field, such as Martin Philip, Abel Sierra and Jeffrey Hamelman have occasionally taken part in discussions here. And as with you, have greatly enhanced the value of TFL.

Thanks.

PS kendalm, although not a regular contributor anymore, is a killer home baker of baguettes, canales and croissants.