Last week, and continuing this week unfortunately, we have guys painting the outside of the house. So, I’m not house bound, but I need to be here a bit more than usual. What a good time to take on projects.
One project that I’ve been promising myself to make for years and years was croissant dough. That promise got more important to me after our trip to Paris and falling in love with Pain au Raisins, a.k.a. snails. I loved them for breakfast, and haven’t found very good ones here. I cheated once and used store bought puff pastry, but they weren’t the same. The big difference between puff pastry and croissant dough is yeast. The later uses it. The process is long, but not particularly difficult. It involves a lot of rolling and folding and chilling and waiting. There are tons of recipes out there on the internet if you want to make them yourself. I used my Baking with Julia cookbook’s recipe. A Google search will find the exact recipe already out there. You can watch the video: http://video.pbs.org/video/2250835454/
So as to not expand our waistlines exponentially I made only a half recipe. Then I took half of that and made Pain Au Raisins and croissants with the other half. Luckily also these delicacies freeze pretty well.
Last weekend we had the Pain au Raisins. Two each. Yes, they were that good. The were only about 2/3 the size I had in Paris anyway.
Yesterday we had croissants. I took the frozen, mostly proofed, croissants out of the freezer and left them overnight on a baking sheet in the fridge. Sunday morning I baked them off. They were good, but could have baked a couple of minutes more. The centers were a little soft. Still, they were gone in a flash.
Now I know how to make them, I’ll probably keep some in the freezer for special occasions.