Croissants

Time: 2 days

Yield: 6-8 croissants

---

Sweet stiff levain:

Ingredients (Percentage/Weight)

• Ripe starter (100% hydration): 33% / 20g

• Bread flour: 100% / 61g

• Water: 46% / 28g

• Brown sugar: 33% / 20g

Croissants:

Ingredients (Percentage/Weight)

• Bread flour: 175g

• Spelt flour: 50g

• Milk: 50% / 125g

• Butter in dough: 10% / 25g

• Salt: 1.5% / 4g

• Levain: 40% / 100g

• Sugar: 20% / 50g

• Laminating butter: 58% / 145g

Egg wash: 1 egg, dash of milk

1 Mix levain. Cover and proof for ~6-12 hours. It should at least double in size.

2 Mix the dough. Knead for ~10 min, until everything is incorporated. Form into a ball, put into a bowl.

Cover and proof for 6 hours. You won't see much growth in the first 4 hours, but your dough should grow ~30% by hour 6

3 Pat down into a rectangle, cover in saran wrap, put in fridge for 45 min - 1 hr

4 Make your butter block (you want it to be the roughly the width and half the length of your dough - mine is roughly 8 x 5in but don't pay too much attention to these measurements)

5 Put butter block in fridge for ~15-20 min. You want it pliable but not melting when it hits the dough.

6 Take dough and butter out of fridge. Dust your counter with flour. Roll out dough 2x length of your butter block. Check to make sure dough is not getting stuck to counter - if it is, dust w/ a little more flour. Do this repeatedly throughout laminating to ensure dough doesn’t rip.

7 Put butter on one half of the dough, flip other half of dough over butter. Pinch edges together. Turn 90 degrees. Roll ~3x length (stop, wrap, refrigerate if dough is fighting you or butter is melting). Trim edges and throw away (you don't want edges with no butter messing up your layers)

8 Do a book fold. Turn 90 degrees. Roll out again to ~3x, trim edges. **If your butter is melting after book fold, refrigerate!! After rolling out to 3x length, do a letter fold. Trim edges. Wrap, refrigerate for at least 1 hour (or until you are ready to cut and shape - full transparency, I usually leave mine in the fridge for 5-6 hrs and then cut, shape, and proof overnight).

9 Take dough out of fridge, roll out so the dough is ~4-5 mm thick. Make slits in dough every ~7 mm. From the slit, cut diagonally across (it'll look like you're cutting a right triangle). Continue cutting until dough is finished.

10 Cover and proof for 12-15 hours. Your croissants should look wobbly and the layers should start to separate when they're done proofing.

11 Preheat oven to 375F. Eggwash croissants (1 egg, dash of milk). Bake for 16-18 minutes.