Baking with Julia

I recently received my copy of "Baking with Julia" and decided to jump right in and make croissants.
Nothing like starting out with something simple and easy, right?

Actually the arrival of the book was at a perfect time. I had mentioned in front of one of my Starbucks partners that I had never made croissants at home. He seemed a bit incredulous at that (he is often the recipient of much of my baking adventures) and said I should make some.  I was planning on scouring the web for a croissant recipe when I got home that afternoon. So, you can imagine my surprise and delight when I stopped by the post office to find the copy of "Baking with Julia" in my mailbox.

I made croissants once during a class at Sur la Table. I have attended many classes there, most with my daughter and that was a class we took together. We made plain croissants, chocolate croissants, and a ham and cheese croissant. I remember us doing some work, but, most of the work is done ahead of time so that there is time for the class. The class was 2 hours long and I can attest to the fact that it took me A  LOT  longer to make the ones I made. Days in fact! Two of them!

My boss at Starbucks is a coupon queen and she recently gave me three pounds of butter, one of them a European style butter. That is the butter I used for the croissants

First roll after adding butter

I definitely gave my poor old Kitchen Aid mixer a run for her money. I made two batches of dough for the croissants. I have one batch in the freezer for a another time. I am glad I made two batches as all the things I learned to do and not do will make the second batch even better.

 I think  know for me one of the hardest thing was waiting between turns. I wanted to see how they were going to turn out. Rolling, folding, wrapping and chilling took several hours between each turn and by the time I got to the part where I was waiting for them to rise before baking, (deep breath!) I ended up rushing that rising a bit.

Croissants are a lot of physical labor. It's real work rolling the dough out into 24x14 inch rectangles, not once, not twice, but 4 times! Counting the final rolling out before cutting them into triangles or strips, depending on whether you make butter or chocolate croissants.

I made both. I'll admit I have trouble not going overboard. I am a bit obsessive/compulsive so of course I made butter and chocolate. It really wasn't that much more involved. Just cutting the dough differently and chopping up some bittersweet chocolate. I need to find where to buy the sticks of dark chocolate you can use when making croissants.

With all the work involved, all the hours waiting in between, I would still make them again. My house smelled amazing while they were baking. I shared them with a couple of my friends and got rave reviews on them, especially the chocolate ones. My two grandkids, who came to stay this weekend (they are 6 and 4) couldn't get enough of the plain ones. Buttery. Flaky. Better than any store bought ones, in my opinion. Try them!