You fold and flatten it like 3-4 times, each takes like 5 minutes and then it goes back in the fridge for 45 minutes.so while it takes like 4-6 hours of time to make croissants from scratch (including proofing the dough etc.), it’s more like 1 hour of work. Really not as bad as people make it out to be.
effort wise I find it on par to making sourdough bread, what with all the stretching and folding of the dough dgring proofing.
and you can prepare them the day before and proof in the fridge, then bake the next morning. Actual fresh baked croissants in the morning are fucking amazing and well worth the work
I love homemade croissants, and make them, mostly because with sourdough starter in there the flavor is incredible but while I am a reasonably neat- handed person, you are understating the difficulty of laminated dough. It wants to tear, the dough and butter have to each be at the perfect magical temperature, can’t overwork it, dough is delicate and butter is tough. It’s fussy as fuck.
I mean, yes, i takes some practice. I was more commenting in terms of time+effort, which imo is not that much actual time spent doing stuff compared to e.g. just making regular sourdough bread. which also takes practice if you want nice big bubbles. In my experience, getting a pretty sourdough bread with high hydradation dough actually took more practice (in terms of handling the sticky dough) than getting good croissants.
And even the first couple of croissants turned out pretty good when i started. Not on par with bakery ones but still tasty. So it’s not like practice results need to go in the bin
You fold and flatten it like 3-4 times, each takes like 5 minutes and then it goes back in the fridge for 45 minutes.so while it takes like 4-6 hours of time to make croissants from scratch (including proofing the dough etc.), it’s more like 1 hour of work. Really not as bad as people make it out to be.
effort wise I find it on par to making sourdough bread, what with all the stretching and folding of the dough dgring proofing.
and you can prepare them the day before and proof in the fridge, then bake the next morning. Actual fresh baked croissants in the morning are fucking amazing and well worth the work
I love homemade croissants, and make them, mostly because with sourdough starter in there the flavor is incredible but while I am a reasonably neat- handed person, you are understating the difficulty of laminated dough. It wants to tear, the dough and butter have to each be at the perfect magical temperature, can’t overwork it, dough is delicate and butter is tough. It’s fussy as fuck.
I mean, yes, i takes some practice. I was more commenting in terms of time+effort, which imo is not that much actual time spent doing stuff compared to e.g. just making regular sourdough bread. which also takes practice if you want nice big bubbles. In my experience, getting a pretty sourdough bread with high hydradation dough actually took more practice (in terms of handling the sticky dough) than getting good croissants.
And even the first couple of croissants turned out pretty good when i started. Not on par with bakery ones but still tasty. So it’s not like practice results need to go in the bin