Thank you.

Hello Lekha,
It is so wonderful to get a comment like yours! You are already enthusiastic about your first attempt and at the same time you see room for improvement and made your own assessment of what you can do different to get to a perfect result! You are a true baker with an attitude that will bring you many successful bakes.
Thank you and enjoy the process!

Greetings,
Marieke & Ed

Hello Mary,
Thank you for your comment. Yes your croissants look wonderful prior to baking and still quite OK after, but they are a little flat. So we do have some suggestions:
First is to indeed not open the oven door during the baking process although we know you do this for even browning but opening the door too soon with the structure not yet stable could lead to a bit of deflation possibly. Or you could try a different (brand of) flour, which could make a difference and could lead to a less heavy result if your current flour has a higher percentage of fibre that weighs the dough down. And our last tip is to add some vitamin C to your flour for extra strength. Due to the properties of vitamin C, it can be used as a dough (gluten) strengthener during fermentation, helping to improve the structure of the dough. You can buy vitamin C 1000mg tablets and in general use one third of one tablet in a dough with 500 grams of flour. You grind the piece of tablet to a powder and add it to the flour.

Lots of success with the pastry baking, hope you will get your honeycomb!

There is minimum butter leakage and the croissants are light but not as light as they can be. I am aiming for the beautiful honeycomb crumb structure.

Proofing time 2.5 hours at 24-26 degC
Dough rested overnight prior to lamination. Kitchen temperature 18 DegC and marble kitchen bench. Butter used 83.1% fat

This photo below shows the proofed croissants prior to baking:
share.icloud.com/photo…rnsby,_NSW

share.icloud.com/photo…rnsby,_NSW

This photo shows how they flattened after baking.

I hope you can give me your opinion and help.

Thanks!

Maybe look for a recipe for crescent rolls, same shape but more of a enriched bread dough type thing, and it solves your flake issues…

If anyone is still here, I love the taste and texture of croissants but hate the messiness of puff pastry. I am actually looking for somewhere I can buy non-flaky croissants.
I’m not much of a baker and like the mystery of them anyhow.
Anyone know where I can get some …or if they are called something else?

Hello Dasme,
Did you make our recipe? It is best to judge by our pictures with the recipe and our video what our dough looks like:
www.weekendbakery.com/posts…roissants/
We would advice for a kitchenAid to knead at speed 4. It is not clear from your comment how long your second batch was mixed.

Thanks again. I cannot express how thankful I am of you blog and your willingness to respond to questions. My husband literally ate half a baking tray of them after a long run. Afterwards he looks at me and said “good god these are good, what have I done!?” Thank you so much.

You sure are, that is already the dream of many bakers!
Lots of people squash and put their weight into the rolling. Realizing this is not beneficial and getting used to the gentle touch is all you needed. Excellent!

Thank you so much for taking the time to help me troubleshoot. I will definitely try your suggestions. I think I squash the layers when rolling. Will try a lighter hand next time. In the meantime, here’s the latest. I hope I’m getting closer? www.instagram.com/p/BtQ…kn52pwbzut

Hi Alice,
Well that is a very good result already! We think that maybe during the process, because you are not yet able to work ‘fast’ there is just some butter incorporated into the dough. So as you gain experience you gain a bit more speed and this will help during the laminating process. In the meantime you can use the fridge a few times extra to cool the dough. When laminating each stage at a certain point should only take 1 or two minutes, but at the same time, you should still keep in mind to be gentle with the dough (do not press hard on it, put your weight into it and do not fight it). So more fridge and rest if needed.
Hope this helps and again, great result already!!

Hi Matt,
Do not give up! Lots of people have excellent results with the recipe. You can also see their bakes here: www.weekendbakery.com/your-loafs/
Of course you always need to make a recipe your own for your flour, hands, equipment and climate, but it helps so much to have a good starting point.
Check out our video and the question page too if you want some more background and support:
www.weekendbakery.com/posts…questions/
As you can see in our log, our first attempts were quite the disaster too, so welcome to the club of persevering bakers 🙂

Let us know how it goes,

Ed & Marieke

Thank you so much for responding!! Here’s the link to pic
www.instagram.com/p/BtK…sfa4w8a807

Hi Alice,
Thank you so much. Can you give us the link to your picture so we can take a look?