After my friend Luke and I made croissants together last December, a whole year went by before I mustered my wits for try 2. This time I used the Tartine: A Classic Revisited cookbook, which only included yeast, and no sourdough starter. And I split the batch in thirds, and made regular croissants, morning buns, and baklava knots.
This time was quite good, but something was a bit wonky with the butter (I got distracted, and left it out a bit too long before pounding it into the block), and more oddly: the yeast was expired! So they hardly rose at all. Like, at all! What!? But really, that sortof explains a bit of the lackluster rising we got last year -- the yeast jar said best by 2017 on it, so those probably only rose a bit from the sourdough starter. Excited to try again with active active yeast.
Still delicous, and my neighbors who are helping me with the testing process were still happy to eat them. :) One kind neighbor's email to me:
I can understand how you might give yourself a demerit because of disappointing yeast results -- unless we compare our creative endeavors to dreams of perfection, we're not truly making art -- but I need you to know that the user experience was sublime!!! The taste, the texture, the layers, the taste (oh wait, I already mentioned that), all of it was wonderful. No demerits from this user, just tons of pleasure.
Thank you so much for sharing your works of art with me.
So glad to get be learning something new, chasing perfection but enjoying the process along the way. The end of 2020 my theme was finishing and I'm planning to carry that over as the theme for 2021. (Not that I am a person who usually has themes, but apparently I do this year!) I want to finish and follow through on long-held dreams and ideas and projects -- some just plain fun, like making morning buns, others bigger works -- and see what I can do.
Here are some more pictures of the process:
