Day 28

Today we started laminated doughs!!  We're talking croissant dough, danish dough and puff pastry...mmmm!

Since I don't have any results yet (just making the dough takes 2 days), I thought I'd show you some of the process.

We made the actual dough last night and let it chill in the fridge.  When you roll it out, it needs to be between 1/4" and 1/2", in a rectangle (this is harder than it sounds).  Then you take your softened, European-style butter and roll it between plastic to get it about 2/3 the size of the dough and lay it on top like so...

Yep, that's 1/2 a pound for the croissant

and a whole pound for the danish dough...

You fold the unbuttered 1/3rd over

and then the buttered side over top of that.  

Now you have dough, butter, dough, butter, dough.  At this point it gets rolled out...slowly!  It gets rolled back down to 1/4-1/2" thick and then you start your first turn (or put the dough in the fridge if it's too warm).  A turn is when you fold the dough over again on itself and roll it out.

The two edges get folded into the center

and then it gets folded in half.  

This is called a "book fold" and is done twice during the whole process.  From here, the dough gets rolled back out to a flat rectangle and put in the fridge for NO MORE than 30 minutes.  These doughs are tricky because the dough can't be too warm but the butter can't be too cold or else things will go wrong.  When it comes out of the fridge, it's best to let the dough sit for a couple of minutes before trying to work with it.  If the butter is too cold it will break or crack and the dough will lose some of its layeriness.  After it's rested for a few mintues, you repeat the book fold and roll it out again.  At this point it gets put back in the fridge for at least a while (we leave ours overnight).  Tomorrow we'll start making pastries out of them!

I also managed to get my doughnuts done tonight which, assuming they pass, means I'll be all caught up!  YAY!  Things are going a bit better so far than they did in the first half of the term *knock on wood*.  

I decided to go simple and just coated them in finely granulated sugar.  They are wonderful!  Nice and light and moist.  WAY better than last time! :-)