French cuisine is famous for its sauces and pastries. We’ll talk about the latter, and more precisely, try to recreate it in our own kitchen. Confectionery such as croissants are especially popular around the world. They are good for breakfast (the French themselves start their day with them), as a light snack, as well as on the festive table. We will make a reservation right away: baking these products is a troublesome and lengthy task. Of course, you can just buy the “7 days” product. Croissants in a bag are always soft, although the goods may lie on the store shelf for six months. Does this bother you? Why do you need margarine with stabilizer emulsifiers? Let's roll up our sleeves and get started.
How to bake croissants, and what you need for this
We stock up with the best products - the taste of the product directly depends on their quality. Flour - a pound - only the highest grade, carefully sifted through a sieve. Yeast, always fresh, but not in powder - 20 g. A pack (200 g) of good, expensive oil - put it in the freezer before the start of the whole process for several hours. Half a glass of fatty natural milk or cream - heat slightly before use. Two eggs (one will go to the dough, and the other to lubricate the bagels) and 50 g of powdered sugar. Well, a pinch of salt and 125 g of water. Have you prepared everything you need? Then let's start.
Step 1. Knead the dough
It is clear that before baking croissants, you need to cook the dough. To do this, knead the sifted flour with yeast. Gradually add powdered sugar, salt, an egg, shaken with milk, water. We carefully mash it for 3-4 minutes and sculpt the bun. At its crown, we draw a cross with a knife and open it along the line of incisions to make a flower bud.
Sprinkle a bowl of flour, put our gingerbread man there, wrap the bowl in a plastic bag and put in the refrigerator at least for 2 hours, and even better - at night. Here is a small nuance: if you plan on
sweet pastries (with jam, candied fruit, marzipan or chocolate), take a little more than the specified amount of sugar; if you conceived croissants with cheese, ham or spinach, then less than the norm.
Step 2. Cooking puff pastry
Sprinkle flour on the cutting board , unfold the bun as a fully blossomed flower. Roll it from the middle to the sides, until you get a layer 1 cm thick. We put cling film on another board , on it is oil taken out of the freezer. We roll it in the same way as the dough. Try to act quickly so that it does not soften. Stack the butter in the middle of the dough (the top layer is smaller than the bottom). Wrap the dough “envelope” and roll out in length to get an elongated rectangle. Fold three times and put in the refrigerator for half an hour. Before baking croissants, we will need to do the same procedure two more times: get the dough, roll it out in length, fold it in a bag and put it back in the refrigerator for half an hour. You were warned that French pastries are troublesome. At this phase, there is an option for the lazy: buy ready-made puff pastry, thaw it, roll it into a layer.
Step 3. The final stage
Roll out our bag into a layer of 5 mm thick. Cut into triangles. You can bake them just like that, or you can put some kind of filling. We turn the bagels and spread on a baking sheet grated with margarine. Before baking croissants, you need to put the pan in a warm place for two hours. During this time, bagels will double. Grease the top of the products with a scrambled egg to make rosy croissants. We send the pan to the oven preheated to 230-240 ° C for 20 minutes.