I just finished reading ‘French Women Don’t Get Fat.’ I know, I’m 6 years behind the times. Please tell me I’m not the only one that read books WAY after they are popular! I just finished The Hunger Games recently, also way behind the times. Anyway, I have no idea why I read this book. I’m not looking to shed any weight. Maybe I was looking for an excuse to drink wine at lunch AND dinner. Maybe I’m going through a Francophile phase? And then I must thank another friend for being such an enabler. She convinced me at brunch this weekend that there are, in fact, pills big enough to make someone like me conquer their fear of flying over the ocean to visit France.
My point being that I read a book about how to manage your weight, and all I came away with was a recipe for croissants from a real French woman. These are not diet croissants, even though they come from a diet book. They are croissants for the woman who’s been good all week and looks forward to her weekly reward of a croissant on Sunday morning. I’m going to take a shot in the dark here and say that if you’ve been good all week, you probably can’t be trusted around a dozen croissants. Is that just me? I just came off another sugar detox, and I went straight to my favorite chocolate shop. I spent so much time in there that my hair smelled like chocolate-dipped sea salt caramels the rest of the day (success!). So, this recipe makes 4 good-sized croissants. You can absolutely stretch it to 6 croissants, though they will be smaller.
I made a lot of changes to Mireille’s recipe, mainly to eliminate any wishy-washy instructions (there were lots). I need clear, concise instructions for baking; a French chef, I am not. I also changed some things that were blantantly wrong with her recipe: do not put flour in the butter layer. I don’t know where she came up with that, but my sweet cousin Stephanie who is a pastry chef said that was absolutely not the way to make croissants. When I put flour in the butter layer, I ended up with crescent rolls, not croissants. Still delicious, but not my goal. My cousin Stephanie calmed my fears about croissants by boiling it down to this: it’s a yeast dough with a butter layer that is folded four times. When you think of it that way, it suddenly becomes more approachable.
Croissant Recipe–a few modifications allowed:
Mireille divided her recipe into the course of 3 days for ease. This way, you can start Friday night and eat croissants Sunday morning. If you want to alter the recipe and replace all overnight instructions with 4 hours and try to make these in one day, go ahead. I haven’t tried that, but I don’t see why it wouldn’t work. But as always, if you have any questions, just leave me a comment, and I will get back to you. I will post answers to questions on the site so that everyone can see them.
Homemade croissant recipe–modifications not allowed:
-unbleached flour. Please use unbleached flour, as that is what Mireille used, and that is how I developed this recipe. -kosher salt. I normally use sea salt for baking, but Mireille used kosher. I copied her exactly because I listen to what a French woman says about baking. Once you’ve mastered this small batch of croissants, be sure to make my other version: CHOCOLATE CROISSANTS!:
