The Secret to a Perfect Croissant

One of the more difficult tasks in the world of pastry is making croissants.  Those flaky, melt in your mouth layers are delicious on their own, and even better surrounding chocolate like in pain au chocolat--my favorite!  Croissants were introduced to the French by the Austrian princess Marie Antoinette in 1770 and I’d say the French have done a pretty good job perfecting them over the past 240 years. 

Now I’m sure all of you are on the edge of your seats right now dying to know the secret to croissants.  Well here it is…BUTTER.  Croissants are a combination of yeast dough and puff pastry.  Yeast dough is made and then butter is put in between the dough and rolled out, then folded and rolled out again.  The process repeats until there are multiple layers of paper-thin butter and yeast dough that when put in a hot oven puff up into the familiar croissant.  However, at Le Cordon Bleu we don’t use just any butter, here we use beurre sec, or dry butter.  While regular butter is 80-82% fat, dry butter consists of 82-84% fat which results in a richer tasting product.  You can of course also use regular butter to make croissants, but if you’re going through the trouble to make your own croissants in the first place, why the heck would you want to?  This is France.  Go big, or go home.

During the croissant demonstration class a student raised their hand to ask the chef where they could purchase dry butter.  “You can’t,” replied chef.  No, he doesn’t mean that you have to travel across Paris until you find a small unmarked store on a street that looks like an alley and once the store opens up after a two hour lunch break then you can buy dry butter.  Literally, c’est impossible.  You need a professional license stating that you are a baker or pastry chef to buy the stuff.  France--what a country!  As long as you look like you can pass for about eighteen they’ll sell you a couple bottles of wine.  However, they’re going to need to see some ID for that butter. 

Croissants are little too complicated for me to explain how to make in just one blog post.  Since it is the season for cookie baking I thought instead, I would share with you one of my favorite recipes for chocolate cookies.  They are gooey and chocolaty with a nice crust from the sugar coating.  Regardless of my growing repertoire of recipes I will never stop making these.  All the ingredients can be found at your regular grocery store—no ID required.   

“The Best” Chocolate Cookies

2 cups flour

¾ cup cocoa powder

½ teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

2 sticks plus 4 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened

2 cups sugar

2 eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla

In a medium bowl sift the flour, cocoa powder, salt and baking soda.  In a separate bowl cream together butter, sugar, eggs, and vanilla.  Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture and mix until just combined.  Chill the dough for at least 1 hour. 

Preheat the oven to 350° F.  Scoop the dough out using a tablespoon and roll into 1 ½ inch balls.  Dip the top of the balls in sugar and place sugar side up on a baking sheet.  Bake approximately 8 minutes. 

Bon appétit and Joyeux Noel!

Bisou, bisou,

Maggie

“Let them eat cake!” 

-This quote is often wrongly attributed to Marie Antoinette.  The phrase comes from the book Confessions written by Jean-Jacque Rousseau when Marie was only a child.  Perhaps if she had actually uttered something similar to those lines she would have said, “Let them eat croissants!”