Saturday, May 22, 2010

Adventures with Pastry: Croissants

I will admit up front that I don't have a great history with pastry. I think I overwork it. However, I buy a mean puff pastry (Borg's - it says "Vegan" on the packet!"). After visiting Vegan Dad's excellent blog and seeing his croissants, and in spite of my pastry history, I decided to give them a go for Mother's Day. M asked if she could help. I used this recipe from Jennifer of Vegan Lunch box fame.

First step was to mix the simple yeast dough and let it rise. That bit was easy enough. We then punched it and M rolled it out:


After that, we added a layer of margarine (Nuttelex):


I tried rolling and freezing the margarine as Jennifer directed, but the Nuttelex did not freeze hard. Instead, I just spread it around.

After that, we folded it as directed:




We then refrigerate, re-rolled and refrigerated the folded dough several times as directed.

Finally, we shaped them:


And here is one the next morning on my breakfast tray, as arranged by M, who made me breakfast in bed:


(By the way, the tray was made by J, who gave it to me for a present last year. He is very talented at woodwork and is toying with carpentry for a career idea.)

How were the croissants? The flavour was excellent and they rose well. The whole double batch was eaten by our family on Mother's Day. However, they were a bit more bread-like than flaky inside. That's probably done to the Nuttelex not cooling hard and me over-enthusiastically rolling it. However, I need to give another recipe a go to see if it's the recipe or me. (I'm guessing me!)

Caturday


Berry's Box: Enter at Own Risk

Our cats love boxes and hiding places, so we grabbed a box the other day from a pile at the shops. Berry commandeered it, though Switch frequently sniffed it, interested in smells that we couldn't detect. We realised why it was so popular once we actually read the details on the front of the box!

3 comments:

  1. Lovely! What a great Mother's Day breakfast too!

    I found my croissants were not as flaky as ones made with butter but who cares about that tiny detail when they taste amazing!

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  2. No matter what, they look amazing! I admire anyone who has the guts, time and patience to have a go at making croissants. I really don't think I could do it.

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  3. Andy made me croissants with nuttelex once and we found the same thing -- yummy and buttery tasting, but just not flaky. So I don't think it's just you!

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