Don't get too excited yet- this is only Day 1 of my Laugebcroissant endeavor.
This evening, I made the dough and the butter block, and I put them in the refrigerator to sit overnight to rest and chill. I also made my lye solution. Tomorrow I roll!
By the way, I'm completely new to laminating pastry dough the classic way with a butter block. My usual way of making pastry dough is the 'quick' way that I learned from watching Nick Malgieri's demonstration on Martha Stewart one day about a year or so ago, when I first tried my hand at making pastries. The method works really well for me, but I wanted to try it the classic way, just because, and I'm happy to say that I did it for the very first time only last week to make butter croissants....... and boy did my arms get sore! lol
All that I had to work with was my very lightweight rolling pin, which was not a good plan to say the least. I ended up running out to my nearest Sur la Table store midway through to desperately ask for the heaviest pin they had, and I came home with a lovely, heavy, marble French-style tapered rolling pin, and boy what a nice difference that made! The thing weighs almost 4 lbs and it cut my rolling efforts in half for sure! It kinda makes for a nice cudgel, too, by the way, come too think of it. Hmmm....
Anyway, the croissants I made last week are all gone now (they turned out amazing!), and as I was perusing the interwebs for all things croissant, I stumbled upon a little blip of info in Wikepedia that mentioned laugencroissants, i.e. croissants dipped in a lye wash before baking- like laugenbretzel (lye pretzels). Well, that perked my ears up right quick and I got all excited, and now here we are!
Here is the dough recipe I am using. It's basically Jeffrey Hamelman's recipe, which I just very slightly tweaked for this batch. I used his recipe 'as is' last week, and since the resulting croissants came out so wonderfully flakey and delicious, I thought I'd use it again for the laugencroissants, but with these slight changes (brown sugar for white and 5g more of it; 5g more water and 5g more milk):
510g King Arthur brand All-Purpose Flour
147g cold water
147g cold whole milk
62g brown sugar
43g soft butter
12g active dry yeast
12g sea salt
283g cold butter for the butter block
The dough is so easy to make. I just dump everything (except the butter block) in a bowl together (no proofing or any other kind of fussing about) and mix with my Sunbeam hand mixer with the dough hook attachments for 5 or 6 minutes total. Then I quickly shape the dough (which is a fairly stiff dough, by the way) into a rectangular shape, wrap in plastic wrap and stick in my fridge on a small baking sheet to rest overnight.
The butter block is fairly easy and quick to make, too: I take my cold butter, cut it into 1/2" slices lengthwise, and configure them together into a square-ish shape on a 7 1/2" square piece of parchment that I cut out previously. Then I cover over the butter pieces with another 7 1/2" piece of parchment and commence beating it into a cohesive 7 1/2' square shape. My new cudgel, er, I mean rolling pin, works great for this part, which takes all of 5 minutes to do, if that. Then I wrap it in plastic and stick it in the fridge, too.
Well, that's it for Day 1. Stay tuned for Day 2- rolling day!
IrishLass
This evening, I made the dough and the butter block, and I put them in the refrigerator to sit overnight to rest and chill. I also made my lye solution. Tomorrow I roll!
By the way, I'm completely new to laminating pastry dough the classic way with a butter block. My usual way of making pastry dough is the 'quick' way that I learned from watching Nick Malgieri's demonstration on Martha Stewart one day about a year or so ago, when I first tried my hand at making pastries. The method works really well for me, but I wanted to try it the classic way, just because, and I'm happy to say that I did it for the very first time only last week to make butter croissants....... and boy did my arms get sore! lol
All that I had to work with was my very lightweight rolling pin, which was not a good plan to say the least. I ended up running out to my nearest Sur la Table store midway through to desperately ask for the heaviest pin they had, and I came home with a lovely, heavy, marble French-style tapered rolling pin, and boy what a nice difference that made! The thing weighs almost 4 lbs and it cut my rolling efforts in half for sure! It kinda makes for a nice cudgel, too, by the way, come too think of it. Hmmm....
Anyway, the croissants I made last week are all gone now (they turned out amazing!), and as I was perusing the interwebs for all things croissant, I stumbled upon a little blip of info in Wikepedia that mentioned laugencroissants, i.e. croissants dipped in a lye wash before baking- like laugenbretzel (lye pretzels). Well, that perked my ears up right quick and I got all excited, and now here we are!
Here is the dough recipe I am using. It's basically Jeffrey Hamelman's recipe, which I just very slightly tweaked for this batch. I used his recipe 'as is' last week, and since the resulting croissants came out so wonderfully flakey and delicious, I thought I'd use it again for the laugencroissants, but with these slight changes (brown sugar for white and 5g more of it; 5g more water and 5g more milk):
510g King Arthur brand All-Purpose Flour
147g cold water
147g cold whole milk
62g brown sugar
43g soft butter
12g active dry yeast
12g sea salt
283g cold butter for the butter block
The dough is so easy to make. I just dump everything (except the butter block) in a bowl together (no proofing or any other kind of fussing about) and mix with my Sunbeam hand mixer with the dough hook attachments for 5 or 6 minutes total. Then I quickly shape the dough (which is a fairly stiff dough, by the way) into a rectangular shape, wrap in plastic wrap and stick in my fridge on a small baking sheet to rest overnight.
The butter block is fairly easy and quick to make, too: I take my cold butter, cut it into 1/2" slices lengthwise, and configure them together into a square-ish shape on a 7 1/2" square piece of parchment that I cut out previously. Then I cover over the butter pieces with another 7 1/2" piece of parchment and commence beating it into a cohesive 7 1/2' square shape. My new cudgel, er, I mean rolling pin, works great for this part, which takes all of 5 minutes to do, if that. Then I wrap it in plastic and stick it in the fridge, too.
Well, that's it for Day 1. Stay tuned for Day 2- rolling day!
IrishLass