Baking Croissants

Would you like to know the difference between baking an ordinary white loaf of bread and baking croissants?  According to Julia Child, it's a stick of butter (112 grams), excessive amounts of resting time, and a special rolling/folding technique.  My romantic notion of baking my own croissants and having them fresh for lunch, stuffed with ham and cheese, was soon forgotten.  They took me the entire afternoon.

 I found The French Chef Cookbook at a book fair, and have her dvd set.  Though I find many of her recipes too rich and impractical for every day use, it's fun to watch her and then try that recipe when I feel like I'm up for some kitchen entertainment.

I didn't follow her exact resting/proofing times as I was impatient.  Despite this, it took me 5 hours.  I enjoyed allowing myself to wallow in smashing and mashing up the butter with the rolling pin, and my palm.  To spread the butter through the dough, she folds and rolls, folds and rolls, rests the dough.  And then does the same again.  The result is 82 layers of dough and 81 layers of butter.  

How do I express my delight at the end product?  After two years of making croissants out of the can or buying them at the super market (both of which use vegetable oil), these were infinitely better.  Light, buttery, delicious, fresh.  I've put half of them in the freezer, not yet baked, to enjoy hot from the oven one day for breakfast with Jbird.  What a treat!  I put some ham and cheese into a couple.  Unfortunately I have a tendency to snack on our chocolate chips so I was out of luck for making chocolate ones this time.

What a delight to have the time to indulge.