(crust crackling) (judge speaking in Japanese)
(Tsukino speaking in Japanese) (judge speaking in Japanese) (Kawachi speaking in Japanese) (Azuma speaking in Japanese) - [Alvin] Hello. Welcome back to another
episode of "Anime with Alvin." Today, I'm gonna be trying to
make the 314-layer croissant from "Yakitate!! Japan." The first thing on the agenda is to make croissant dough from scratch, and I've never made croissants before, so Kendall's actually be the one directing me from behind the camera. Into a stand mixer, I'm
combining all-purpose flour, bread flour, sugar, yeast,
and combining the salt with the milk first to help it dissolve. And while the salt
becomes one with the milk, I'm gonna mix the dry ingredients first, using a hook attachment
and going on a low speed until the dry ingredients
are incorporated. And once everybody in the dry
ingredients are now friends, I'm gonna add in the salty milk, followed by some softened butter. Back up into the hook,
followed by a couple minutes of forceful beating until
the dough is nice and smooth. And throughout the course
of these next few minutes, I'm stopping in and using the hook to scrape down any of the sides so that everybody can
actually become friends. After repeating this a couple of times, the dough is now ready to be moved, so I'm oiling up a bowl and transferring all the dough that I can out of the mixer using a bowl scraper, probably one of the best tools ever invented for the kitchen. The dough is ready, but the
gluten is pretty worked up, so we're gonna relax a little
bit before we push it further. After a 10- to 15-minute rest period, the dough is now ready to be worked again. The goal is to get this block of dough into a shape of a rectangle, approximately the size of a 1/4 sheet pan. And with the help of a
rolling pin, bench scraper, and Kendall's kind and encouraging words keeping me inspired, I'm able to get this into
the shape that I want. Thanks, Kendall. The next step is to cut out a
rectangle of parchment paper that approximately represents
the size of the butter block that is going inside this dough. After cutting a shape that fits well within the safety
margins of this dough, and obviously with the
help of Kendall again, I'm gonna try and attempt
to slide this dough back onto the tray so that it can go into the fridge to chill. The dough that made it onto
the tray is not the same shape as the dough that was on the
table, so after fixing it up and making sure that the
parchment fits one more time, it's time for a quick nap in the fridge. Wait, hold up, that's illegal. This is a block of butter, and so next, I'm gonna throw the block
of butter in the mixer. In the mixer. In the mixer. I'm gonna
throw the... (sighs) I'm gonna throw the... There you go. That's followed by some all-purpose flour, and I'm gonna combine
these with the attachment that is not the hook one until the butter and the flour have
forcefully become friends, again stopping from time to time to use a spatula and
scraping down the sides to make sure that everybody is together. I had actually never realized
that the butter block used for a croissant actually
has flour inside of it. Kendall explained this has something to do with the way that it stabilizes and makes it easier to work with, so I'm just happy I get
to hang out with her, because I get to learn
all these cool things. Once the consistency has been approved, I'm now allowed to go
onto the envelope stage, where I'm placing the
paste inside a large piece of parchment paper and
using the smaller piece as a guide for how large
the final block should be. I like to call it the envelope stage because it's like folding the butter into a nice little package to be delivered right into the middle of the dough. A really cool trick here
is to use the rolling pin and press the butter and
roll it into the sides and edges of the envelope. That way, you get these
nice, sharp corners, and everything fits well. After a couple minutes of coaxing
the butter into its shape, this little package is ready to be mailed right into the fridge. Now that both the dough and the butter have been sufficiently chilled, it's time to combine them together. I'm peeling the butter
off of the parchment and placing it carefully
onto one side of the dough. We're basically gonna be
making a butter Pop-Tart here. It's also important to
brush off any excess flour, especially toward the seams,
as that's gonna prevent us from closing the butter Pop-Tart together. So after brushing off any excess flour, we're gonna pinch together the sides carefully but forcefully, and after shaping it
back into a rectangle, we're gonna transfer the butter calzone back onto a tray with Saran Wrap. Heat is our number-one enemy
through this entire process. The butter has to be
cold, so to ensure that, we're gonna take this butter calzone and give it multiple naps in the fridge. Once everything is nice and cold again, we're gonna bring the dough back out, sprinkle it with some bench flour, and use the rolling pin to make four indents across the dough. This helps the dough roll out smoother and prevents any butter from
squishing out the other side when rolling using a rolling pin. The goal right now is to get the dough into a long, rectangular shape. We're brushing off any excess flour, and then we're gonna do
what is called a 3/4 fold, taking one side of the dough, bringing it 75% of the way across, and using the other side of the dough to meet it where the first fold ends. I'm not exactly sure what the science is, but I believe this helps make four layers and prevents the seam from being exposed to the edges of the croissant. And even though I don't fully
understand what's going on, I trust Kendall with my complete heart, so this is the way she
says it should be done, that is the way it should be done. Now go put my baby in the fridge again. Now that the dough has been chilled again, we're gonna repeat the
process, indenting it, flouring it, rolling it out
into a rectangular shape, but this time, we're gonna do
what is called a book fold, folding one half of it
2/3 of the way across and then folding the remaining
dough over that first fold, making sure to brush off
any flour in the meantime. It's also really important
to stretch out the corners so that they meet the edges
of the rest of the dough so that the whole thing
looks as much of a rectangle as it can, like a book. Usually I'd put this back in the fridge, but the dough is still
cold, so I'm gonna continue doing the same thing we did
before, doing another book fold. At this point, we've done four folds multiplied by three folds and multiplied again by three folds. That's 36 folds. But if my math is right, we
have many more folds to go. So back in the fridge, and back out again. Here we go. Flour, indent, roll, fold. 3 times 36 is 108. Flour, indent, roll, fold. 3 times 108 is 324. 324 layers are inside this dough. All that's left is to shape and bake. After one more time in the fridge, we're still gonna roll this
dough out with the same process, but instead of a small rectangle, we're aiming for a large rectangle approximately 1/4 inch thick, and we're trimming the
edges with a pizza cutter so that we can shape the croissants into a nice, triangular, tapered shape. Now, with a little bit of that Ctrl + C, Ctrl + V magic, we now have a gadget that is five pizza cutters all lined up. This is gonna go down
the length of the dough until we get nice, even lines, cutting this into nice, even strips. Ooh, that's nice. And with the help of
the first pizza cutter, we're gonna bisect each
rectangle along its hypotenuse. Honestly not helping the stereotype here, but we're gonna make these
croissants one way or another. Kendall showed me a trick
where you use a knife and make a small cut at
the base of each triangle. This apparently helps with the rolling and shaping of the croissants, but I think I'm just gonna let her
show you how it's done. Here I am, watching earnestly as Kendall elongates
the strip of the dough, followed by opening up
the legs towards the base and rolling up the croissant
into its final form. Tight rolls are key, so she's also stretching
the dough as she is rolling, which gives the croissant a longer and more elegant life cycle when it comes to the rolled shape. Wow. That is beautiful. High five. Let's see if I can do it. All right, so the first
step is to get the dough into its longer shape, so
I'm slowly teasing the dough, using a gentle touch as to
not break or tear the dough. This way, I can get a nice, tapered point. And I'm also gonna press
the tip of the dough into the work surface. This is a trick used to
almost anchor my dough as I'm rolling it across, but
still using a gentle touch, slowly rolling it and coaxing
it into its crescent shape. Not bad, if I say so myself, and you can kinda see the layers, maybe. And after doing three more off camera, these are gonna go proof
before we start to bake. So we have a lot of
these scraps from earlier that we trimmed off, and I
don't want these to go to waste. I'm gonna make some snacks by sprinkling granulated
sugar over the tops of these and rolling them up into a rough shape. They don't have to be perfect because, well, they're just snacks. And I'm essentially making a
rough version of kouign-amann, a dessert that gets a lot of its flavors from caramelized pastry,
butter, and sugar. So we'll let these proof,
and we'll see how it goes. All right, back to the crazy croissant. I'm gonna make a simple
syrup, because in the show, they specify that the high sugar content inside the croissant is what
created that deep degree of caramelization and dark color
found in the final product, so I thought this could be a cool test to run alongside the egg wash,
which I'm gonna be making by using a separated egg
yolk and combining that along with a little bit
of sugar and some cream. All right, now it's time for the fun part. Our little rolls have
proofed, our glazes are ready, and now I'm gonna brush half
of the rolls with egg wash and half of them with the sugar syrup. It's important here that you don't agitate or brush any of the washes
on the cross section where you see the layers. Having any egg wash or sugar
syrup stuck in the layers may bind them together,
preventing them from rising. We spent so much time and
effort on those layers that I wanna make sure that these can grow up to their fullest potential. So after delicately trying
to brush only the tops, these are going in a pretty hot oven, around 400 and 450 degrees. Here's a beautiful time
lapse, that Brad shot, just to show you the
transformation, and voila. This is round one. But the thing is, even
though these look perfect, they're not done. I'm brushing each one with
a little bit of sugar syrup. You can clearly tell that the egg wash is getting
a more intense color, but these are going back in the
oven at the same temperature to try and create that
deep, caramelized crust. Here is another time lapse
shot by Brad. Beautiful work. And these are looking quite, quite dark, honestly kinda burned on top, which is what we are looking for. So after they've cooled and
I can hold one in my hand, you can see what the final
product of round one looks like. Really dark on top, but the layers are coming
through nice and beautiful. All right, nothing left
but to hit it with a spoon. Hey, that's not too bad. I can see the top is
cracking off a little bit, so I'm gonna keep
whacking at this croissant until I can get as much of that
dark shell off as possible. After a couple minutes of carefully and strategically whacking
this croissant with a spoon, we end up with a pretty beaten-up roll. But you can see that
there's a lot of layers. I don't really count 314,
but I think we can do better. So this is actually one that we've taken completely to the point of burnt. It smells terrible in here. Yup, here it is, folks. Hey, Kendall, what do you think? Kendall is absolutely
thrilled with the end result. Without further ado, I think it's time to crack this open and see
if we can salvage something. All right, all right. Wait, wait. Wait a minute. Wait, there's no way this is working. We actually got a golden-brown croissant to emerge from that darkness. There's just a really
dark part at the bottom. I don't know if, Andrew,
you wanna try this. Oh, he does, so all right, my dude. Here we go. Take one for the team, I guess. Cheers. Oh, oh. Oh, no. Oh. Oh, no. Oh, that is, that is disgusting. That is... Why did we not cut off the
burnt part off the bottom? Because the golden part
actually tastes quite nice. It's kinda like those crescent rolls you have at those parties. It's definitely not as flaky or as airy as a real croissant should be and definitely not 324 layers'
worth of deliciousness, but it's quite nice on its own. But let's just say I'm really glad I made those snacks from earlier, because these look beautiful. Honestly, these could've been
the main star of the show, and I'm really happy that
Andrew had actually made some orange pastry cream that we're just gonna
make a couple of snacks for the team right now,
'cause these are delicious. It's buttery. It's flaky. It's amazing. The pastry cream is so nice, and man, we just call it a day right here. We should've just ate the
scraps the whole time. (mellow music)
