How to Make Croissants Recipe - Laura Vitale - Laura in the Kitchen Episode 727

hi guys I'm Laura Vitale and on this episode of learning kitchen I want to share with you my recipe for croissants no croissants have been requested here for a very long time and to be honest I've been kind of putting it off just because not that this is a difficult recipe but it's time consuming and you guys know I've all about sort of easy to make easy to shop for kind of recipes but this is a bit more involved but it's worth every bit of effort I promise the end result is just incredible the start what we're gonna start with is making the dough you'll need all purpose flour granulated sugar salt this is rapid rise or a quick yeast quick quick rise yeast you'll need some unsalted butter that's been softened at room temperature and some cold whole milk you don't you want to make sure it's whole milk it's really important now this is like the first step of this of the croissants and then one as the recipe progresses I'll show you the other steps obviously now because you're cooking you're using a quick rise yeast so you don't need to proof it which it makes this really easy I'm going to put all of our ingredients into my standing mixer that's been fitted with a dough hook attachment and trying to get actually in the bowl and not on the bowl but that's okay some of the butter now there's gonna be more butter coming just in a bit but for now I just need a little bit and you'll need your milk bring this up and mix that until you have until your dough comes together now what I have here is like a pie plate and essentially I'm gonna flour my pie plate not too heavily but you know you want to flour the bottom because we're gonna get this rising in here I'm just gonna keep my eye on my dough make sure it comes together well and then we'll go on to the next step that is gorgeous okay like these sticky I'm gonna pop this on a floured surface let's see if I can get it all out of here okay I don't have my dough scraper near me I forgot to get it out but that's okay nothing my hands can't fix right flour your hands actually makes it easy to get anything else been sticky oh and I made a rhyme uh-huh okay get this out of here form it into a disk beautiful dough very foolproof but it is something that you need to put a little TLC in it you know it's a good process it's a very relaxing process think of it that way and then what I do is I just kind of pinch the bottom flatten this into like a disc and I am gonna place this in my I'm gonna follow the top in my pie plate I'm gonna cover this with plastic wrap but I'm gonna pop it into the fridge for a minimum of six hours I always do it overnight it's just better if this is not gonna rise as much as you think it should but it's gonna be perfectly fine so I'm gonna wrap this up pop it in the fridge now while the dough is still in the fridge it's been in the fridge overnight we need to get going on making the butter layer now if this scares you don't worry you know croissants are flaky and buttery because just a bit of butter layer in there so don't panic but I do want to point out that you can not absolutely cannot use the butter that comes in a tub that you can spread on toast because that never hardens the way you need it to be you need like sticks of butter to be really really cold and that way it's nice and hard and keeps its shape now you're gonna need to form a seven by seven inch square with the butter so what I do is I just use my 8 by 8 inch square baking pan is a guide because I'm gonna need just to make I'm gonna need to make the butter layer just a bit smaller than this so it's just a really easy way because I don't have rulers I would tape measure that I literally use to make my croissants which you'll see later but for now we're just gonna use the baking pan now I've got two big pieces of parchment and again don't worry now you see we just need a little bit more butter probably about much and won't be at seven inches so that looks good and you can overlap them of course and then what I do is I just do it like them so that looks about from here to here it looks about seven inches to me and again don't you know no one's coming over and testing you know one you're not gonna be graded on this so don't panic and then what you do is just just put your butter that's why it's kind of easy you can cut you can you put them in sticks but it's just a little bit more difficult to blend it together into one big square so that's why I like to cut them like so and then what you do now because this is gonna move you see that you take another piece you put it on top like a fat parchment and then I just take both pieces closest to me and I hold it down with my weights then you take a rolling pin and you were literally I'm gonna roll this together now it's gonna get bigger of course than seven by seven but we're gonna trim the edges and it's gonna work out perfectly by the way a rolling pin like this works a little bit better than this it's just more comfortable in the hand but whatever you got now you can see that is looking good but now it's no longer a seven by seven so we need to trim it so definitely not to trim it this way and then what you do with that butter it's it's a process it is but that's what croissants are again it's not difficult me how how difficult gonna be to to roll some butter between parchment paper but it is a process but it's been telling you when you've got time to make homemade croissants you'll understand why they're incredible just don't give them in the house if you have no self-control like me because I am the queen of zero self control I just take the rest to put it on top and then I'm just going to literally roll that again except I'm gonna roll it onto itself pretty much that looks good enough all right and the croissants are not a diet food so we promised preheat it for a different recipe so no I don't want to hear it whether or not you can leave you out the butter because no okay and then I just roll the very top just into the layer of butter I mean it just takes a second because now you pretty much have your shape already formed all you're trying to do now is combine that little Pete those little pieces that we put on top and kind of make it one even square and look the great thing about using big pieces of parchment is that you constantly rotate and that way it makes life easy and I am all about keeping life easy and you can also just push with your fingers like circle at this point the butter starts to kind of come to room temperature a bit and just push it back it's a shape and now what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna put this into the fridge for about an hour or so because we just worked with this butter it's starting to come to room temperature and if I'm trying I'm gonna if I try to roll this with a dough now it's just gonna pretty much leak everywhere so I don't want to do that I'm gonna stick it just like this into the fridge for about 30 minutes or so probably an hour be better we'll move on to the next step my butter was in the fridge for about a half an hour and this is the star this is a dough we made yesterday now you can see has risen but it's not like bright dough when you leave it outside for an hour it's like it's just prison perfectly it is exactly what you're looking for so now we can get going on the rolling out process do not be afraid of this process there is nothing to be afraid of now I'm just deflating it a little bit with my hands I'm not gonna need to re-roll this out or anything because it's a pretty dense dough beautiful I do however know I think it would be much better if I move that there I move that there and what I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna flower this now make sure you have one of these pastry brushes on hand because you're gonna need to do a lot of brushing now you're gonna roll this until it's about a 10 by 10 inch square and I've got my 8x8 baking pan here so I'm gonna use that as my guide I want it to be obviously bigger than my 8x8 baking pan but I want to keep this as square as possible I mean when I tell you this dough works you can you can see that it does it works really beautifully and I'm really happy with the way it has turned down then what I do is I just use my hands to keep it all the same thickness but kind of shape it into a square that's definitely a by inch josè shake your head if you agree that that's an a buddy at that time by 10 all right we had too much fun around here but what can I say then I'm just gonna take my butter my butter square and now what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna put my butter square on an angle so that it's one corners facing up with this corner you can see that and then you take it one corner now this is where a brush comes in you're gonna need to brush off any excess flour because that will prevent from having really great you know really great flaky layers so brush that off and then you're gonna stretch it out if you need to it's a really forgiving dough make sure you brush off all the excess okay and then you bring this in so now what you have is a nice little square brush brush brush well it doesn't really matter cuz at this point you actually are gonna need to flower again just because you're gonna have to roll this out into an 8 by 24 inch now the the width is roughly about is already so you don't have to just roll this out to 24 inches which is one two and three times the amount of this so what I do is I start here so I think oh one and then there's sixteen and then there's 24 so I want best to end right about here if it's an inch or so short I promise I'm not gonna come over and I'm not gonna test you on this I just want it to be you want it to be pretty you know pretty right because you know you are working with dough so it is it is a bit more tricky than if you were just working with a quick bread you know if you were just making a batter and putting it in in a pan and baking it so make sure you do the very best you can to keep this the same thickness and you just roll this out a little bit longer and then I'm just gonna evenness things out a little tiny bit okay now take your pastry first of all take one of the pieces of parchment paper marry this piece together so that it's um there's no butter on there but not putting butter on your baking sheet put some flour on there keeps anything from sticking now you take your pastry brush and you brush off the whole surface of this of your dough then you fold this in thirds like you would an envelope envelope envelope however you call it and you want to make sure you brush off the flour because that is gonna be Wanda layers okay don't worry about the bottom because it's gonna get rolled out anyway and now what you do if you put this on your baking sheet I'm gonna cover this with plastic wrap and I'm gonna stick this into the fridge for 30 minutes after 30 minutes I'm gonna show you what we do and I'll explain a bit more but for now wrap this up I kind of just tuck and I just like to take the kitchen towel just cuz it's a heavier and I put that on top all right into the fridge for 30 minutes and then I will show you the next step that looks awesome okay let me make some room here put a little bit more flour okay now this is a part where I must pay attention these otherwise I'm gonna have to be here all night nobody wants that I'm gonna take this dough now the width is perfect you're just gonna have to roll it out again like you know you want the length to be to be right now I'm gonna do is I am just gonna roll it same length as before okay make sure you keep your pastry brush on hand because you're gonna have to brush off the excess flour and now you see the folding we did when we fold it like a letter is now creating layers the thing about croissants that makes them so good is the layer it's the layers of flakiness the butteriness all that plays into a factor when making croissants if your dough doesn't stretch as easily as mine does it's because the butter is getting too warm so what you do is you just fold it in half pop it into the fridge for 10 minutes at a time and then you just re-roll it out yes or no you unfold it and then you roll it out that's really the easiest way to do it just gonna roll this out I want it to be about there that looks about right to me now I'm taking a pastry brush brush off the surface all right fold this in thirds again shape brush off the excess flour now when you are going to put this back into the fridge and you're going to repeat exactly what we just did roll it out and fold it in thirds again two more times so I'm gonna put this into the fridge take after 30 minutes you take it out you roll it out again to you know an 8 by 24 inch rectangle put it back in the fridge and you do that two more time's on the second time they're gonna put this into the fridge overnight so when I see you next it will be tomorrow and then that we will be ready then to make our croissants so I'm gonna repeat put it back on the same baking sheet make sure you kind of Pat it to make sure it's one even it's nice and even so cover this up into the fridge for 30 minutes take it out do it again put it back in for 30 minutes take it out do it again put it in the fridge overnight that's it cover this up pop it in there I'm going to do this a couple more times when I see you tomorrow or for you it'll be the next few seconds we'll be ready to making homemade croissants so you see it's not difficult there's nothing difficult about rolling out a piece of dough it's just time consuming if you want to put the effort in I promise you I probably put my Laura Vitale stamp that it will be worth every second if it's raining out for us but starts snowing soon so what better else thing to do then stay at home rolled out some dummy croissants it's all science my Jo was in the fridge overnight thing you want to make sure that you cover it as well with plastic wrap and you pop it in the fridge so to recap one I rolled it out so you saw I put it into the fridge for 30 minutes then I took it out and I rear old it and then I put it back in the fridge for 30 minutes rolled it out and then after that I just left it in there overnight so what I'm gonna do now you need to roll this out to about a 44 inch long rectangle 8 by 44 inch now my surface here is about 24 inches so I'm gonna cut this in half only because I don't have enough surface here in this counter to be able to do that so I'm just going to carefully cut this in half do it as even as you possibly can set that aside I also got a couple of baking sheets you know with parts from paper on them to have them ready if you come close if the cameraman will do his job very well come close you can already see what we've created which is just tons and tons of layers that one you bake these they are going to be puffed and golden and absolutely magnificent so 44 inch long rectangle so this is going to be a you want to be about 22 inches so think about it this way Oh C&D wat so you want this to stop right about here I don't have a really big ruler I just you know I do this by eye really and you want to make sure that you keep you keep it around eight inches so take your time but also don't take too much time because if your kitchen is super super hot this is not going to roll out the way it should so if it starts kind of going back on itself you can also turn it like that a little bit as long as you keep one side eight inches if it starts to not want to cooperate and it's just getting too warm to quickly fold it pop it in the fridge for a little bit and then unfold it and roll it out once you have it rolled out I'm going to brush off any excess flour then what you do is you just take a sharp knife and I'm gonna just cut the very edges to make it as neat as I can and then you take well you wouldn't could use a really large ruler I don't have one I've got one of these that's little pops it'll stick around this is cold I don't even know what this is called to be honest it's like a little skewers and you're gonna make a mark every six inches let's see a little bit short but that's okay and then what you do is a little less than six inches maybe about five and a half and you're gonna cut straight down I'm just going to cut each one on an angle like so and try to you don't want to rush the process but at the same time what you don't want is for the dough to get warm now some might be limit small so I'm gonna be a little bit bigger but that's okay you know what these are homemade this is not a machine you know it's it's what it should look like like you put a lot of effort into it then I just take one side and you can see it's not you want the point to be in the center so I just take my rolling pin and ever so lightly kind of roll out the one side here just like so and you can pat it down with your fingers as well if you want to but you can just stretch it out that's what I do anyway and then you don't want to do this too tightly but then you just roll these like so I just pinch the bottom sometimes it'll just come undone and then you take the edges and you pinch them together like so and you're gonna put these on your baking sheet that's been lined with parchment paper now the edges when you pinch the edges they're going to come undone but that's okay don't worry about it and it work out I've got my croissants here these are really teeny tiny ones only because I didn't want to have any waste so I figured I would make a couple of little tiny ones now you know these some of mine are bigger than others a thickness or all the same and the reason why that is you should be able to get 14 really good sized croissants out of this dough but because I don't have any long enough surface and I had to cut my dough in half I wanted to kind of use up all the dough that I had but the thickness is perfect and they do will they will start to detach but the reason why you pinch the bottoms together the little edges together is because it helps keep their shape now I'm gonna do is I am going to just cover them with a little kitchen towel and keep them somewhere warm for about an hour so they'll plump up a little bit not too much but they'll pump up enough and you also want to get your oven preheated 400 so that that's ready and then when these have risen a little bit we will be ready to pop them into the oven they look amazing now they're not doubled in size but they are perfect and I did want to point out one more time that you know this recipe if you were going by the book it'll make it'll make 14 nice sized croissants so the beauty about making home good you know baked goods at home is that I don't want any waste so I make them slightly smaller so that I can use up the entire recipe in whole dough so now I'm gonna do is I'm gonna brush the tops with some egg wash which is just one egg bean that I just beat with a little bit of milk and you want to make sure that they're nicely covered with the egg wash because this is gonna give them really beautiful color and I have my oven preheat you can see that the ends will come apart but it keeps the shape which is why we pinched them and I had my oven preheated to 400 and you want to make sure that you have that ready for you I'm gonna brush all these and get them ready for the oven they look gorgeous now oh I missed one I don't know how that was possible okay so before you turn your oven on you want to make sure that you place your two oven racks at the very top in the very bottom of the oven so that the the racks there should be one at the very top want the very bottom I'm gonna stick these in there for about 20 to 25 minutes halfway throughout the cooking time I'm gonna switch them I'm gonna pull with the tray that was at the top at the bottom and they tray that was at the bottom at the top just look at everything that's a really even cooking and I'm gonna rotate them as well so that it gets really beautiful golden brown color and I'll show you what they look like when they're done it'll take about 20 to 25 minutes total these babies baked for 23 minutes I have to just say there are times or even I think to myself that's really impressive and I don't think that tomatoes out very often because you guys know I'm all about really quick to make recipes I'm very casual I just I am not really someone that decorates cakes and things like that but when you can create a croissant that looks this magnificent you gotta pat yourself on the back I mean come on if you can make something that looks like it just came out of a beautiful bakery you have to be pretty proud of yourself now like I said these would make bigger ones if you want to make 14 of them you know mind a bit smaller there is another trade back there their perfection and I'm just I'm literally dying to dive in so that I can show you let me take you closer to me because I want you to see as we pull this apart it's really hard to show but look at the maybe you can see it I just want to be able to show you the incredible amount of layers in there that is a croissant that is what you want you want layers do you want the inside to just be flaky you want it to look I have a pretty awesome let's face a pretty awesome camera guy here so he's going to be able to show you exactly what I'm talking about that flakiness and that's what you're looking for in a croissant I'm pulling this apart so I can really show you a good you know a good picture of this I'm I mean I almost want you to take this inside the camera and see it that's for flavor they're truly on point I don't know what else to say about them other than the fact that they are just absolutely worth every second of effort and like I mentioned the beginning this is not a difficult recipe it's time-consuming and I also didn't want to mention that you might not want to do this in the summer months because the hotter it is the more difficult it's gonna be to keep that butter cold when you're rolling it out because it last the last thing you want to do is warm up that butter because the more the butter comes up the more it's gonna melt and you won't be left with flakiness you're gonna be left with just a big mess so do this in the winter months if you can it's definitely worth doing I hope you enjoy spending time with me the recipe will be written on my website Laura in the kitchen calm as detailed as I possibly can so that they makes it as clear and it's easy as possible for you to follow I hope you enjoy spending time with me and I'll see you next time bye bye you

Channel: Laura in the Kitchen

Views: 5,420,953

Rating: 4.7719464 out of 5

Keywords: chef vitale, chef laura vitale, laura vitale, chef laura, homemade croissants, croissant recipe, homemade croissant recipe, easy croissants, how to make croissants, croissant recipes, easy pastries, bakery recipes, dessert, cook, cooking, baking, making pastries, kitchen, cookware, kitchen appliances, cooking show, homemade croissant recipes, simple croissants

Id: GgsN1gymxxY

Length: 25min 36sec (1536 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 22 2014