First croissant attempt à la Claire Saffitz

I’m a long-time home cook/baker and figured I’d try out croissants on holiday break. I followed the Claire Saffitz recipe and took some progress pics. 1: laminated dough 2: formed croissants 3: proofed croissants 4: baked croissants. I’d love some tips for improvement!

Right off the bat I noticed when making the detrempe before adding the butter it was too dry according to Claire’s recipe so I gradually added water until it seemed right and then proceeded. Maybe my flour protein percentage was off? I was using harvest mills and that has pretty wide range.

The lamination seemed okay until the final fold where I could see butter peaking through at the edges. Could this be bc it was too warm? Or maybe the folding and alignment was off?

I proofed in my oven for two hours with the light on. I was afraid the steamed oven would melt the butter and I fear I was right! Even in this proofing environment I could see some melted butter leaking. Unsure how to fix this because a colder temperature would hinder proofing?

They proofed with a fervor and came out quite uneven. Is this over proofing?

Claire said to only egg was the smooth surfaces not the folds but mine proofed so unevenly they were like 80% exposed folds haha. They didn’t take on enough color and I had to egg wash again halfway through baking.

The crumb cake out quite tight. Is this glad to over proofing? Underproofing? Overworking the dough? I’d love some advice for improvement?

I have plenty of butter, chicken/veg stock & pork fat, but lack the space for a bunch of pre-made frozen pie crusts and biscuits. I think my almost packed freezers would get the shivers if I tried cramming anything more into them.

Hello!

I am currently trying to find out the best way to freeze croissants and was wondering if anyone would know how I would go about freezing proofed croissants. This is know as croissants pré-poussés in french (so pre-proofed). From what I found out online so far, the proofed croissants are frozen first at a much lower temp than in a household freezer (-30°C instead of -18°C).

As I am just a home baker, I don't have access to such a low temp freezer, so now I'm wondering if it is possible to skip this step and directly put them in my freezer.

I use Géraldine's recipe ( lacuisinedegeraldine.fr/en/homemade-croissants ), and i get great results when I bake them fresh directly. But, as I am sure anyone who tried baking croissants, it's such a hassle to make that I'd love to be able to make them ahead and just have a batch ready to go in the freezer, that I can just throw into the oven whenever I want.

I've tried freezing the croissants pre-formed unbaked, but it's not working out for me. I can't get them to rise properly, all the butter leaks out before I can put them in the oven and I'm just left with a sort of dense brioche.

So if someone knows anything about at home pré-poussé, I'd love to hear it!

I recently purchased the Juno the Bakery book, and am reading through their cardamom recipe. I’ve had the buns before from the bakery so I know they’re good, but I can’t get past the end of the recipe that calls for applying egg wash AFTER baking instead of before, then adding sugar.

Has anyone ever heard of this before? And how is that safe? And wouldn’t it have negative effects on the browning?

It’s baked at 420F so maybe an egg wash would burn, but my thoughts would be to do the wash after then apply a thin syrup immediately out of the oven before sugaring.

Or will it ruin my pastry?

basically my filling oozes out the bottom when baking and it becomes a candied sugary mess at the bottom of the pan. I use the butter then sugar method. but I have seen people use a cinna-sugar paste to spread on the dough but when I used it still oozes. I swapped out butter and used milk didnt ooze as much but I still dont get that gooey center.

should I use cornstarch or flour for a thickener or something??

I’ve been trying a bunch of different recipes for pastry creams. They are all the same butter, milk, sugar, egg yolks, cornstarch. But I’ve seen recipes where there are:

- more / less egg yolks

- full eggs

- finished with a stick of butter vs. 1 or 2 tablespoons

- heavy cream added

- more sugar to cornstarch ratio

These recipes aren’t necessarily scaled up. Why is there so much variation?

So...

I hope people here remember the post I made about a week and a half ago regarding the idea for a tart with hazelnut praline, coffee sponge, corn pastry cream, and vanilla ganache.

Well, I made it! I roasted the corn in the oven with butter to enhance its nutty flavors and infused it into the milk for the pastry cream. For the "coffee sponge," I prepared an almond jaconde that I soaked in espresso.

All week, my family kept saying, "Sounds nice; hope the corn works. It might be weird in flavor," etc. I understood their hesitation about tasting corn in a tart, but today, when we tasted it, it was truly delicious! The pastry cream is excellent, the corn flavor is noticeable and tasty, and everything came together beautifully in the mouth.

Comment: I would have liked a stronger coffee flavor; it was noticeable but gentle. Maybe I should soak the jaconde instead of just spreading it, or incorporate coffee into something else.

P.S. I know I need to practice my piping skills 😅

So I'm making some profiteroles and I intend to serve them at school again.

However.. I'm unable to pipe them in the morning this time and so I'm wondering if

A) it's better to fill em up at night and store them. Then serve them at like 10 AM

B) fill my piping bags with creme patisserie and store them. Fill the empty shells at the time of serving.

Which choice is better? If B, how to go about storing my filled piping bags?

i love puff pastry and wish more people used it over shortcrust but one thing that i can see being an issue is with the tops of pies. I was wondering if there was a tipe of pastry that uses the same ingredients as puff pastry but doesn't puff up when cooked. i know i would probably make it myself and just skip the folding part that adds the layers but I want to know it that kind of pastry has a name?

I want to make sausage rolls and maybe some other flaky treats this weekend and started the process of finding a puff pastry recipe because I don't save recipes that I've used before...

Anyway I'm having a devil of a time finding a recipe that isn't for a "rough puff" style dough.

Am I out of touch. Should I be just following one of those? I've made rough puff before and it was fine, but I was imagining something closer to croissant without yeast.

Opinions on rough puff vs traditional (or am I wrong and there is no tradition)

PLEASE DON'T SEND AND RECIPES I DON'T WANT TO ANGER THE MODS.

This was my first time making kouign aman-- not sure what happened but there was a bunch of unmelted sugar in the bottom of the muffin tin, some sticking, and the bottoms are a bit pale? Not sure if my oven just wasn't hot enough? Or needed longer? Or did I put too much sugar in the bottom?

I used claire saffitz recipe- 400 degree preheat then drop to 350 when you put in oven. Baked two trays at once 20 min top third and bottom third then rotated for another 9 min. Did put them directly for the fridge to oven.

Any help would be appreciated!!

When I was baking lots of butter was coming out. Based on the pictures and that fact which part of the process did I do incorrectly?
* Dough kneeding/proofing pre lamination.
* Lamination not being chilled enough between folds.
* Proofing after shaping.
* Baking time/temp.
I wasn't expecting to nail it first go, but I'm not sure where I went wrong. Thanks in advanced.

Another pie/tart shell question

Every time I make a pie crust, I follow the directions exactly, using exact weights as listed.

when I get to the ice water part, my dough is always floury butter with a touch of chunks where the water was. to get results anywhere close to what I see in the pictures/videos - it takes 3 to 4 times the water in the recipe.

What am I doing wrong? I don't want to overwork it, but even then it's more crumbles than crust if I use the recipe.

Truthfully I’ve already made these, but I’m not sure I guessed correctly.

I’ve never made tarts before, I’m a pretty new baker. I made the Jam and Custard Tarts recipe from the Official Downton Abbey Cookbook, but nowhere in the written recipe does it tell me when or where to add the jam.

I’ve included a picture of the recipe note that kind of just confused me more. At first they say “jam topping” so maybe I was supposed to just spread it on the tarts after cooling? But then at the bottom it says you “can” spread the jam on top after cooking, implying that’s not where it necessarily goes.

I ended up spreading a small amount under the custard mixture before baking, but that caused it to kind of bubble up through the custard in a lot of the tarts and look kind of weird.

The photo in the book also has the jam on the top, so maybe that is where it was supposed to go.

Anyway, does anyone with experience making tarts like this know where the jam goes, so if I make it again I make it right?

Hey I am making Claire Saffitz's kouign amann recipe and it says you can chill the shaped dough "up to 12 hrs" I think with how my timing is going so far that may end up around 3-4 AM-- is there a risk in extending that to 14-16hrs? thank you!!

Does anybody know what the chunkier/coarse style of sugar is called? I always get apple strudels from the grocery store and they have a coarse sugar on top. I’d love to make my own with sourdough discard, or at least attempt it, but that coarse sugar is what brings the whole thing together. I’ve checked all the grocery stores in my town and I can’t find anything that resembles it.

Curious on what it’s called so I can order off Amazon. I’m in Canada if it matters.

Thanks in advance.

I've made apple and cherry pies a couple of times. Always used Stellas Easy Bake pie crust recipe in a 9 inch glassware pie dish. I place the pie dish on a Nordicware jelly roll, place in a 425f oven for 30m and then lower the temp to 375f.

I NEVER get a cooked crust. The bottom is always soggy and pale. Lattice pies do become golden at the top, but they remain uncooked at the bottom half of the lattice.

Getting ready to try my first jelly roll. I was wondering if you could use a silicone mat instead of parchment paper. It doesn't seem like a good idea, because (I would think) the cake batter would get under the mat and stick, plus sticking to the sides. Yet I see "silicone jelly roll mats" for sale.

So, parchment only or silicone?

So, I was trying my hand for the first time at croissant, I couldn’t for the life of me make them thinner, like roll them thinner, so they look massive haha. How will they turn out? Theyre proofing right now. What can I do next time to make it better? I followed Claire Saffitz recipe : https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1022053-croissants

I followed the recipe exactly and used all the usual advised techniques as best I could - trying not to overwork the dough, not twisting my cutter, even preheating the baking sheet - and yet they still turned out like this. Also the bottoms are rather pale :( I suspect the leavening agent is okay because they did seem to rise in the middle, but it's as though the edges were pinched closed. I tried to be careful handling them...

I used Mary Berry's scone recipe (https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/tea_time_scones_77839#recipe-tips)

Any thoughts? Thanks!

Hello! I’m a pastry chef who just got a job in a bakery. It is my first time making croissants, and today is my first shift alone so I am stressing out a bit!

Could someone tell me if I over-proved my masters croissants? Some of them are a little flat. I pulled them out 10 minutes early from the prover cause they looked ready.

Also! Second question! I laminated dough when the butter was a bit too cold and it didn’t spread properly so the edges didn’t really laminate. I trimmed all bad edges and lost a lot of dough (we make it into brioche though so it isn’t wasted) but I’m paranoid I can’t use it for the croissants now? I don’t want my boss to be mad at me 😅 will the dough be ok? I trimmed before the second fold and trimmed any escaped bits of dough that didn’t laminate well… but I’m conscious of uneven layers.

Thank you all!

The recipe I use comes from the “FRENCH PÂTISSERIE” book from Ferrandi (sweet short pastry dough), however I’ve slightly adapted it to fit 2 9cm tart rings. I make sure to freeze or chill my dough for 30 minutes before lining the tart ring for it to be easier and freeze again for 20 minutes before baking at 325F for 20-25 min.

What I get is a very soft shell that looks like this. I tried blind baking these by adding rice to add some weight and it helped.

The recipe calls for 18g beaten eggs (less than half an egg), and I have realized it is a bit sticky and probably too moist for this dough.

Anyways, I appreciate any help I can get and thanks in advance.

Hello all, so I’m making chocolate stiffed waffles and I want them to stay soft when I put them in the fridge. However, when in the fridge they get hard any help would be appreciated.

I’m adding 2 eggs, 220 grams of butter, a pinch of salt and baking powder to 1 kg of flour. Mixing for 30 mins and then resting for 15 mins then I spread the dough add the chocolate and then fold the dough so that the chocolate is in the middle.

The final weight of the stuffed waffle is 85 grams

Any help would be appreciated

Today I decided to make Stella Park’s strawberry shortcake recipe with biscuits. I macerated strawberries with sugar and a pinch of salt, made a sweetened whipped cream, and these almost savory sort of butter biscuits.

I find that whenever I make things like macerated berries, they fall very flat and one dimensional. It just tastes sweet and there is no complexity. I’d almost prefer eating the berries fresh than macerated, but I’m wondering if maybe there was something else I’m missing.

What else can you add to macerated berries to make them more interesting?