Our Kitchen of the Month lives in Valad’s House (as in Valad the Impaler) and doesn’t have an oven . . . well she has an oven but it sits in the middle of the floor in it’s large cardboard shipping box.  Can you guess who our Kitchen of the Month is?  How about if I tell you she lives in France and is super funny, then you’d know it’s Katie from ThymeForCooking.   I thought that might give it away.  So you’ll find the recipe on Katie’s web page.

Here you’ll find I baked Katie’s recipe twice and mixed the dough a total of four times.  Now, in my defense, I should tell you that the first time I baked these it was done under total laughing battle conditions . . . you don’t get that??  Back up.  I had been a long time since Ilva and Karen and I had baked on-line.  This recipe is really a day long affair with the folding three parts the most concentrated activity.  That required us mixing the dough up and allowing it to rest for between four and eight hours.  We agreed we would have to start this early so that the croissants would be ready by late afternoon/early evening . . . in Europe about 0800 (8AM) would be early . . . in Dallas about 0100 (1AM) that was really early.  

So you can see right there a Bread Baking Babes life is not all about glamour.  This Bread Baking Babe keeps regular baker hours. 

I mixed my dough up in the early evening after dinner.   It was dry.  No, I mean it was really dry, really totally dry.  It will come together in the mixer but by the time it does,  you’ve overworked the dough and it’s ruined and that’s what happened to me. 

Bake it up and you’ll find it makes some pretty cute little croissants that are tough and just blah tasting!

It’s true that when the going gets tough, some BBB do go shopping (usually at King Arthur), in this case I think a number of us hit the books pretty hard.  I started going through my bread books looking at every croissant recipe I could find.  I found several that were pretty much Katie’s recipe but with more milk.  That’s when the BBB’s all sat around that oven box at Katie’s with our coffee and books and started going on about flour types, hydration rates of flour,  ingredient ratios and then generally just bitching on about anything that caught our fancy until we each one felt like we had the answer and were well on our way to solving the worlds problems.

I then mixed up my dough with more milk and added in an autolyse step.  I upped the milk to 350 ml.  In Bake Wise, Shirley O. Corriher utilizes autolyse in her croissant recipe.  Autolyse is simply pre-mixing some of both the flour and the liquid, covering it and allowing it to rest for 30 minutes.  That simple step and those 30 minutes allow the flour to absorb the liquid before the butter can water proof the flour and enhances extensibility of the dough.

Now I know you should only change one thing at a time but my second baking with the recipe I added the extra milk and the autolyse step.  The dough was like changed 100%: it had life and was smooth and it felt like workable dough.

I started it rather late in the day and wasn’t shaping it until after dinner.  At that point I was past measuring to be sure I got some 60X30cm(24x12 inch) rectangle or where was the half mark to cut said rectangle in half or notching those half strips to get perfect triangles.  I think I may have used some un-lady like words and taken up the chef knife and gone at the dough.

I did notch the bottom of each triangle.  It’s such a simple thing and seems so inconsequential BUT what is does is allow those tip ends to come out just a tiny bit further.  You need to also think about angling your hands as you roll it up and away from you so that you put just slight pressure on the ends. 

The first time I rolled these, I was like a basket case worrying about getting them measured and perfect.  With this second bake I thought to myself: This is not rocket science, they are not going to be exactly alike Just Do It.  I rolled these babies up in a flash, easily half the time of the first batch and they looked better than fine.

Oh people I got me some croissants!

(Blush . . . Actually I changed 3 things - I baked mine at 400° instead of the 350° the recipe called for.)  The first batch baked at 350° for 20 minutes were pale until I upped the temp to 400° and swimming in butter on the parchment paper.

These baked at 400° (now this is my oven not yours and not Katie’s) colored beautifully, did not burn.

If anything I’d let them bake an extra 2 to 3 minutes at 375° to get just a little more moisture out of the middle.

Gorn said they were as good as Paris but I think he maybe likes me and is a little biased.

Maybe they weren’t as good as the ones I enjoy here when I’m in Paris but . . .

If you want to enjoy these and be a Bread Baking Buddy, bake ‘em up, blog about them and send your link to Katie from ThymeForCooking before 2 February and she’ll send you a Buddy Badge and put you in the round up.