Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Croissants and Danish


You should know, first off, that I didn't make this dough myself. I went to a class at Les Madeleines in which I learned how to make these laminated doughs, and at the end of the class, dear Romina gave each of us a big piece of each: danish dough and croissant dough. This was in February. I put them in my freezer. Possibly for too long.

At any rate, the cutting and shaping and rising and baking of these kinds of pastries is all new to me, so that's what this project was all about.


I learned that I get very frustrated with yeast doughs. The rising is so finicky. It seems like the air has to be just the right temperature and have just the right level of humidity for it to work out right. Putting it in the warming drawer of your oven is not a great idea because that just makes the butter melt. In the future, I will have to have a day full of plans that will keep me busy while the dough rises, so I won't fret over it.

I also learned that I need to just attempt to make this dough from scratch. The frozen and thawed dough didn't rise quite as much as it should have and didn't have the highly anticipated tender flakiness.


The cutting and shaping itself was not as difficult as I thought it would be.


And if I hadn't messed up by adding an extra egg (please don't ask) into the almond cream for the danish, all of the pastries would have been beautiful to look at. They all tasted delicious, just weren't quite as flaky and puffy as they should have been.


TGIP Rating--Croissant and Danish--KEEPER. Next time (sometime when I'm feeling exceptionally brave) I'll make the dough myself.


Next up: Fresh cherries are one of my favorite foods in the world. And I want to use them in a delicious dessert. So, I'm making smitten kitchen's Cherry Brown Butter Bars. And I may add my own little tweak to the recipe. Maybe.

2 comments:

Bruce Almighty said...

Finished product looked great. Pretty sure I could pack several of those down!

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