Makes: 15 - 20
Prep time: 15 minutes
Rising time: 2 hours
Chilling time: Overnight

Making your own croissants is wonderful, and well worth the effort, but it is not for the feint hearted! The rules have to be obeyed, and you need patience, patience, and more patience to wait for the chilling and proving processes. Please make sure that you do knead the dough for the full ten minutes. If not the dough will not be as light as it should be. The end result is amazing, so be courageous and try these delicious breakfast treats out for yourselves.

500g Strong White Flour + extra for rolling
15g Active Dry Yeast
90g Sugar
15g Salt
300mls Warm Milk (a little above blood temperature)
340g Butter
1 Egg, beaten with a little milk

Step 1
Place the flour, yeast, salt and sugar into a bowl. Mix with a spoon and then add the warmed milk. Incorporate all the ingredients with your hands into a ball.

Step 2
Take out of the bowl and knead on a clean surface for about ten minutes until the dough becomes elastic. (You can feel the dough changing as you knead).

Step 3
Flour a bowl and place the dough into it. Cover with cling film or a cloth and put in a warm place to rise to double the size. Approximately 1.5 – 2 hours.

Step 4
While the dough is rising, place a sheet of cling film onto a work surface, place the butter on top, and then put another sheet of cling film on top. (The sheets of cling film should be quite long, approximately 1/3 meter). Squash the butter down, and then roll it out to a 25 X20 cms rectangle. Place this into the refrigerator to chill.

Step 5
Once the dough has risen, place the dough onto a clean work surface, which you have previously floured, and roll into a large rectangle, twice as wide as the butter rectangle you have already made. Place the chilled butter in the centre of the rolled dough, fold one side over the dough, and follow with the other side to encase the chilled rolled butter. Turn the dough one quarter turn.

Step 6
Roll the dough into a rectangle once more with the open side facing away from you, (see below) fold as before one third over, and follow with the other side the seam on one side, wrap the dough in cling film and place in the fridge to chill for ½ hour. Remove the chilled dough, and roll out with the seam facing away from you once more and fold right to left and left to right. Place in cling film once more and chill overnight.

Step 7
The next day, place the dough on a floured surface and with the seam facing away from you, and cut the dough in half. Place this half in the freezer for another day! Really good idea as you can have the croissants another day without the hard work!

Step 8
With the remaining half, roll it out onto a floured surface into a rectangle about ½ cm thick, about 30 cms wide and 20-25 cms high. To shape the croissants, take your rolling pin to use as a ruler, and make elongated triangles.

Heat the oven to 190°C/350°F/gas mark 5.

Step 9
Once the croissants have doubled in size, take the saved egg wash from the fridge and with a brush paint the croissants gently with the egg. Put the croissants into the oven and bake for 15 minutes until they are a nice deep golden brown.

Why not try:

Filled croissants: For Almond Croissants make a frangipane filling and place one large teaspoon in the centre of the bottom edge and roll as before. This quantity should fill about six croissants.

Frangipane: 2 oz/50 grams Ground Almonds
2 oz/50 Grams Caster Sugar
½ oz/15 Grams Flour
1 Egg White
¼ Teaspoon Almond Essence

Mix the dry ingredients together in a bowl. Add the egg white and the almond essence and beat thoroughly.

Chocolate: Place a piece of mild dark chocolate (approximately 2 inches/5 cms x ½ inch/1? cms) to fit inside the bottom edge of the triangle, with 1 cm gap at both ends, and roll as before.

Cinnamon:Add two teaspoons of sugar to ½ teaspoon cinnamon and sprinkle over the whole of the triangle and roll as before. This amount will cover four croissants.

Croissant recipes:

Croissant Croque Monsieur
French Eggy Croissants