I really ought to put a bit more work here. I've been cooking up a mess in the kitchen, so its not like I've slowed down the cooking. Heck, its the one thing I never really put off longer than a couple weeks. A girl has to eat!
Thats whats so beautifully easy about learning to cook. You get the chance practically three times a day to try your hand at it! It even has a built in punishment reward system. Get good at it, and practice, BAM! You get to eat something tasty. You don't practice? Then you're paying someone else to do it, or eating medocre food. Unless you have a sweet deal with another chef friend who's cooking for you... Lucky dog! Feel the wrath of my envy!
I made the croissants. Twice. In massive culinary text book size batches. Which was a bit of a mistake, as I knew from the get go the recipe was faulty. The Pastry Chef, the CIA pastry text book, has a terrible editor, horrible consistency, and I wonder if any of the recipes were tested... but its beautiful and I knew that before I bought it at half price.
The recipe measures milk in lbs. The danish recipe on the next page, in fl oz. RED FLAG. The 2lb 8 oz of flour is listed as 1.31 grams, in their metric measurement. Should be KGs I realized. RED FLAG. Use butter, it says. Unsalted and add salt to dough? Salted butter? RED FLAG! And finally, it was a sugar enriched dough which I think is sort of a technique avoiding short cut. What about proper fermentation to create sugars? RED FLAG, but one I truly didn't mind because it gave me an excuse to buy some malt syrup.
It was the sugar that did me in on batch one though. Fine, the combination of sugar and my own slothfulness. I took almost 24 hours to make the dough start to finish, retarding the dough overnight in the fridge (because I made it at 2AM). This is a big NO when you have sugar in your dough! It makes the yeast frenzy and produce way too much alcohol bitter nasty spent yeast flavor... and bam. Thats what the croissants tasted like. Also, I used unsalted butter, because the recipe didn't specify. I did add salt, but not enough.
Bland, excessively fatty pastry dough.
Waste. Of. Butter. JAM IT!
I quartered it, baked one, and saved the rest for caramel or cinamon buns. Going to be FANTASTIC! Even with the poorly made dough.
The other batch? Great! Salted butter, what I had on hand, and an expedited process, (I started at noon instead of 2, and didnt even go to a movie or a walk mid process). And bingo. I need to let them rise longer though!!!
Pictures? I have one! On... my phone... which I apparently deleted after sending it to Jordan. Now, to see if he REALLY appreciates my mad kitchen skills, and kept it, so that he may send it back, that I might post it for you allz!
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