Fun Project, I Made Real Croissants!

Here is a link to the recipe I followed. That way you don't have to read through my long-winded explanation to get to the recipe. :)

It took me some searching to find a recipe for real croissants. I knew that true croissants have butter laminated into the dough and multiple folding and rolling sessions to create the flaky buttery layers.

I was shocked to discover that the crescent roll recipe in my America's Test Kitchen (who I consider to be a very accurate and reliable source for good cooking information) cook book was just an ordinary dough recipe cut into triangles and rolled into crescent shapes! Surely they knew that a real croissant was so much more!

With every Google search for, "Crescent Roll Recipe," I was equally disappointed. All the results were for recipes of ordinary dinner roll dough baked in crescent shapes.

And then it dawned on me, There must be a difference between Crescent Rolls and Croissant Rolls.

I didn't know how to spell Croissant. I couldn't even get close enough for auto correct to help me. I ended up having to use the 'speak to Google' feature on my phone.
Sure enough, by saying, "French croissants," several real croissant roll recipes popped up.

As this recipe says, croissants are a great recipe for anyone to try because they don't require any special equipment or ingredients. They just require technique and time.

And, by 'time', I mean three days worth.

On day one, you make the dough and then it needs to rest overnight in the refrigerator.

On day two, you laminate the butter into the dough. The butter is first encased in the dough. Once sealed, the package is rolled out and folded in thirds,... and rolled out and folded in thirds,..... and rolled out and folded in thirds. Resting for 20 minutes in the refrigerator in between each rolling. When the rolling and folding in done put the dough in the refrigerator overnight.

On day three, you get to shape the croissant roll and bake them.

The croissants turned out picture perfect! And, according to Mr. In The Mid-west, they were flaky and delicious.

I expected the whole process to be quite arduous and difficult, but I am happy to say that it really wasn't that hard and the dough was really easy to work with. (The new marble rolling pin that my mom sent for my birthday, might have been what made the dough so easy to work with. "Thank you, Mommy!" I may give it it's own little post.)

I think I will definitely be making croissants again. I'm sure I won't make them often enough for them to lose their 'treat' status, but they will be something I enjoy creating instead of a chore. If you like eating croissants and baking I encourage you to give this recipe a try. 
I am just leaving a link for this recipe, instead of posting the whole recipe, because it is so long. Maybe I will post the entire recipe on my blog someday so that I can find it quickly, but for now I will just bookmark the page.