i made croissants for the first time today (started yesterday) and this is how they came out. From my inexperienced eye, I think the shape and flakiness are almost acceptable, but texture and lamination are very bad. I followed claire saffitz' recipe from NYT and tried to stick as close to it as possible, though I halved the recipe because I miscalculated how much butter I would need. I will say I'm lacking in a lot of baking equipment (no stand mixer, also didn't have plastic wrap, nor the counter space, so I was working off of a cutting board on my dining table). Not sure how much of an impact that has.
In terms of things I noticed-- when I was rolling out my dough before cutting and proofing, the dough had small cracks and showed the butter underneath. Proofing went ok, but maybe not as puffy/jiggly as ideal. The main thing was when I baked the croissants, some of the butter leaked out... I probably made quite a few other mistakes along the way, but I'm not sure what those were...what can I change next time to keep the butter from melting and make the croissants actual croissants (and not croissant shaped bread)?
Hi badaker,
First i think your croissants have great colour and flakiness! There might be a couple of factors contributing to butter leakage and bready texture.
I hope this helps you somewhat. There are so many factors that come together to making a successful croissant and I would love to know how this goes.
Lin