Croissants: A little bit of flaky heaven

Croissants. Flaky and crispy on the outside, soft and buttery and delicious on the inside. Fabulous, delicious, and only available in bakeries, where the croissant fairy makes them appear, because my god no one could actually make pastry like that on their own, right?

Wrong.

And you know what? It's surprisingly easy. I know many of you are rolling your eyes at me disbelievingly (is that a word?), but seriously. Not hard. The secret to making delicious croissants boils down to one thing: butter.

Dear god, the butter. It's really indecent. Basically, all you do is take 3 sticks of butter. I'll stop and let you process that for a minute.

You take 3 sticks of butter and beat it into a butter square. An 8" X 8" square of butter... more time to process the wonder of a giant butter square...

Then you fold the butter square into your croissant dough, roll it, fold it, roll it, fold it, roll it, until you have layers of dough alternating with butter. That's how you get the flake.

Dough alternating with butter. Heaven.

The most high-tech cooking tool you need is a good rolling pin. And I have a great one -- my friend Gwen brought back the biggest, heaviest, most amazing rolling pin from Peru for me. I'm not sure how she did it because it is seriously 2 feet tall and weighs like 10 pounds, and it must have taken up a huge portion of her suitcase. But I certainly appreciate the effort (and wish she weren't back in Peru so she could enjoy the croissants too!).

It takes forever to make the croissants, but most of the time is time for the dough and the butter to chill in the fridge. The actual amount of time you spent hands on is pretty minimal, so don't be intimidated. You can do it.

Croissants

Ingredients:

3 tablespoons + 3 sticks of cold butter
1 3/4 c whole milk
4 t yeast
4 1/2 c flour
1/4 c sugar
2 t + a pinch of salt
1 egg
1 t cold water

First, melt the 3 T butter over low heat. Once it's melted, remove from the heat and add in the milk. Check the temperature here, it should be around 85 degrees (between 80 and 90). If it's too cool, heat it up a bit, if it's too warm, let it cool some.

Whisk in the yeast, and once combined move to the bowl of a standing mixer fitted with a dough hook attachment (if you don't have a dough hook, no fear, just use your hands!).

Add the flour, sugar, and 2 t of salt. Knead on low speed until a cohesive dough forms. This took about 3 or 4 minutes.

Then increase the speed to medium-low (2 on the kitchenaid) and knead for 1 minute.

Remove from the mixer, cover with plastic wrap, and let the dough rest for half an hour at room temperature.

In the meantime, line a baking sheet with parchment paper (or wax paper if you don't have parchment paper). Shape the dough into a vague 10" X 7" rectangle and wrap with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 2 hours.

While the dough is in the refrigerator, make an 8" X 8" parchment paper square -- cut a 24" length of parchment paper and fold it in half length-wise to make a 12" rectangle. Then fold over the 3 open sides to make an 8" square with enclosed sides. Really crease the sides well, because you're going to stick butter in there and beat the hell out of it, and you don't want it to ooze.

Now, take your 3 sticks of butter, put them near each other and just start whacking them with your rolling pin. Beat it and beat it some more for about a minute. Basically, you want it to make your 3 sticks of butter into one butter blob.

Use an offset spatula, a cake server, whatever you've got, to scrape the butter up off the counter and put it into the parchment paper envelope. Turn the envelope over so the folds are underneath, and roll roll roll until the butter fills the entire envelope and you have an 8" X 8" butter square.

Refrigerate at least 45 minutes.

Pull the dough from the fridge into the freezer for half an hour. Then you're going to do something fancy called "laminating" the dough. This doesn't involve putting plastic coating around the dough, but rather, involves squishing butter between dough layers.

Get the dough from the freezer and turn it out onto a lightly floured surface. Roll it into a 17" X 8" rectangle with the long side parallel to the edge of the counter. Place the butter square on the middle of your dough rectangle, and fold the sides of the dough over the butter so they meet in the middle.

Press the seam together with your fingers, and press the edges of the dough sealed with your rolling pin.

Roll out the dough lengthwise into a 24" X 8" rectangle, then fold the dough into thirds to an 8" square.

Turn the dough 90" counterclockwise, and roll out lengthwise again to a 24" X 8" rectangle. Fold into thirds again to make another 8" square.

Place the dough on the baking sheet, wrap with plastic, and pop back in the freezer for half an hour.

Do it all again -- place your dough on a lightly floured surface, roll it out lengthwise to a 24" X 8" rectangle, fold into thirds and place back on the sheet. Wrap with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 2 hours (or overnight).

Again, pop the dough in the freezer for half an hour before removing it and placing it on a lightly floured counter and rolling it into an 18" X 16" rectangle (with the long side parallel to the edge of the counter.

Fold the top half of the dough over the bottom half to make a double layer of dough.

Get out your measuring tape, and measure 3 inch segments along the bottom, marking each segment with a small slice with a knife (you should have 5 cuts). For some reason I didn't take pictures of this. Oops.

Along the top, measure in 1 1/2 inches, then 3 inches from that, again making slits in the dough at each segment (you should have 6 cuts).

Use a knife to cut from the top left-most mark down to the first bottom mark. Keep going, cutting from mark to mark, until you have 12 triangles and 5 diamonds. Unfold the diamonds and cut into 10 triangles.

Now shape your croissants! Cut a small (1.5" slit) in the top (widest part) of your croissant. Tug on each of these points and the bottom skinny point. Then starting with the top, roll the top part down toward the point, stretching the bottom point out and tucking it underneath.

Curve them into a crescent and repeat with the remaining triangles.

Place your crescents on a parchment-lined baking sheet (at least 2.5" apart), wrap with plastic wrap, and let stand until nearly doubled, 2 1/2 - 3 hours. At this point you can also refrigerate up to 18 hours or freeze.

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Whisk egg, 2 t cold water, and a pinch of salt together, and brush on top of the croissants.

Place the croissants in the oven, and reduce the temperature down to 400. Bake for 10-11 minutes and then rotate and switch location of the baking sheets. Bake until golden brown, 5-8 minutes more. Watch them carefully, ovens differ!

Enjoy!