With Mother’s Day just around the corner Sydney and I have had numerous requests to teach a class on Pâte à Croissants (Croissant dough). To be honest I was not ecstatic at the thought of conducting a culinary class on croissants without having taught a beginner bread and pastry class.
Pains sucré or sweet bread dough has caused calm sane people to revert to a two year old having a tantrum. However a good friend of Sydney’s wanted to learn the method and technique to prepare croissants for a Mother’s day brunch she was hosting; her mother had just finished a long painful battle with breast cancer and this is going to be their first Mother’s Day without chemotherapy. I could not in good conscience refuse.
The small "catch," as Sydney's friend explained, was her mother also had celiac disease (she needed a gluten free diet), croissants alone are difficult to master, but gluten free... I began pulling my hair out at the thought.
You can almost smell the buttery goodness!
Sydney and I decided six students would have to be the limit, three students per instructor seemed appropriate. In theory the recipe has few ingredients yeast (fresh or active dry), flour, liquid, sugar and salt. As I mentioned earlier, jumping into creating flaky light buttery croissants without any previous knowledge of yeast breads seemed a recipe for disaster. Sydney and I began brainstorming a successful, flourishing, and enjoyable pains (bread) class. Since croissants can take a minimum of 12 hours to a maximum of 3 days,depending on the method used, we concluded it would be advantageous instead of only teaching croissants to teach a pâte feuilletée (puff pastry), pâte à brioche (brioche), and pâte à croissant (croissant) class both with and without gluten over a 5 day period.
Croissants are, in my opinion, a cross between pâte à brioche and pâte feuilletée. Both puff pastry and croissants need the détrempe and barrage at the same temperature, rest in the refrigerator between rolls, and use the same method of rolling, folding, and turning. Brioche and croissants each use yeast to rise the dough, and need to be proofed more than once.
After we completed a schedule for the week, we were ready for our group of students, the only prerequisite I asked was that each student needed to have an understanding of yeast breads. We prepared six syllabuses, recipes for the puff pastry, brioche, and croissant, and each student received a mini food processor. When Monday arrived we were ready and motivated.
Article comments
1 - Louise
Did you use the warm cream with the white sugar and salt with the dry yeast?
thnx
2 - 12345
I made these over yesterday and today. I used the warm cream, sugar and salt with the yeast as the comment above suggested, which worked well.. I'm well experienced with gluten bread baking, but in the past few months have been introduced to gluten free baking, so i'm still quite new. I did find that even using a tablespoon of xanthan gum, the dough still didn't get nearly as elastic as the instructions suggested, and while completing the turns the dough often cracked with rolling.. I would reccomend freezing the rested formed croissants BEFORE baking because my first few simply fell apart in the oven so I put the rest in the freezer on the baking pan for about 20 minutes before I put them in the oven which worked well. They looked more similar to a flakier pillsbury crescent roll than the picture, but they turned out DELICIOUS and I will be making them again, maybe with some dark chocolate hidden inside too!
3 - Jennifer-Adventuresome Kitchen
Hi! I love your croissant recipe. I've wanted to attempt gluten-free croissants for some time now. I have a few questions..1) what is a Beurrage Package? I've never heard of one, and would love to know what it is and where to find it.
2) I'm confused on the 'flaps' directions in the Paton section..can you articulate that a little more clearly? It seems that you wouldn't need flaps if you're just wrapping the butter..Are you saying that the 4 corners of the dough need to be brought together over the center of the butter, slightly moistened and secured?- so it looks like the back of an envelope? I'd appreciate any clarification. I'll report back once I've made these. Croissants are the one pastry I truly miss.
4 - Lauren
I made these on Saturday with TREMENDOUS results. I started the dough in my bread machine because my house is cold in the winter and I knew it would keep the temperatures just right. GF dough will NEVER be elastic like gluten dough but this is by far the best dough I've tried for croissants, and my celiac friend LOVED them. we didn't let them proof quite long enough either as it was getting late, but they were still delicious.
Jennifer-- I highly recommend watching some youtube videos on croissant making. Its almost impossible to understand written directions and it will give you a visual on adding the butter, turning and folding the dough. Its very helpful to see it done if you've never done it, and everyone's technique will be slightly different but this dough will make fantastic GF croissants!
5 - Bobbie
There is a detailed step by step on my blog site bobbie's baking blog
6 - Rose Sucree
I found out I had to eliminate gluten from diet about 2 months ago; croissant are favorite food. I visited bobbie's baking blog for the full details. This recipe rocks Thank you! Rose
7 - Igor
Thank you! You've performed a great service for us Ciliac sufferers!