Croissants trial #2: Pandan scented bicolor chocolate croissants

Oh boy. Who knew it would take 4 disastrous batches just to put a layer of chocolate dough! lol. The chocolate layer kept tearing during oven spring.

I needed to practice this because I need something gimmicky for pain au chocolat. I want everything to look inviting once I'm ready for career pivot.

The formula were kept the same as last post, except I took 200 grams of dough, kneaded it again with 20 grams dutch-processed cocoa and 20 grams water. I don't have low capacity mixer, kneading stiff dough was quite painful, even just 200 grams of it (lol). I will definitely make the chocolate dough independently from the main dough next time, the size of 5 to 6 batches, so I won't have to knead the dough.

Some do laminated chocolate layer on top of main dough to retain maximum flakiness. I just feel the end product looks hideous, so I prefer the regular bicolor dough.

I didn't fill them with chocolate batons for this batch. This was meant to be practice batch, so I left out chocolate batons to lower the cost of learning.

Few important pointers:

• The chocolate layer is still bread dough. Do. Windowpane. Test. I learned it the hard way. By the time cocoa is incorporated, dough strength will be recalibrated.
• Shaped croissants (raw) don't freeze well. The condensation formed during thawing will melt away the chocolate layer.
• Forget water spraying the proofed croissants, if that's your thing. The chocolate layer will melt away. But spray the main dough before applying chocolate layer. Don't egg wash, for aesthetic reason.
• Glaze with thick simple syrup. I infused my syrup with slices of pandan leaves.
• A more general pointer: try your best to mold your butter at even thickness. Different thickness will thaw at different times
• Make sure the tip of each croissant is perfectly hidden at the bottom. The "V" connection between the tip and adhering surface will be a weak point for cracking. Think of unscored crusty bread
• I found so far there are two ways of incorporating cocoa into the bit of dough; more butter or more water. I found the watered version allows tidier rolling, while the buttered version (brioche) tends to crack during rolling (as out of refrigerator dough). I suspect the buttered version fits better for dough sheeter rolling, where the entire laminating process could be finished in 4 minutes. Both could crack during oven spring, but different kind of crack. The watered ones would peel away into shards, while the buttered one would crack in craqueline topping/dutch crunch manner.

Note:

The current state of my starter is 8:4:1:2 bran:water:sugar:skim milk powder. I'm trying to improve it's versatility for enriched loaves. Maybe I'll add tiny grams of butter once it adapts to skim milk.

Best regards,

Jay