The original recipe went live in January 2012. I keep switching between these and the buttermilk biscuits recipe also up on the blog. Both are equally good. I have tweaked this recipe and added some whole wheat flour which was not there in the original recipe. Whole wheat does affect the texture a bit, and they are not as soft as the ones with just all purpose flour, but still these are pretty fluffy and it feels good to know that you are including more whole grain into your diet. Except the first and last photo, the rest are pictures I had shot when the original post went live.
ORIGINAL POST January 2012:
I am two days late.
In posting (before you get the wrong ideas).
I have been slacking with my DB challenges. I was not able to do the last two as I was in India. And this month, even though I could have worked on it, some other things, besides my laziness, kept me busy.
I have been slacking in all my posts and now there is a huge backlog of recipes to be shared. I have resolved this week I am going to try and catch up with some of those pending posts. I will be sharing some seriously good recipes in the coming days. So watch out for this space.
Audax Artifex was our January 2012 Daring Bakers’ host. Audax worked tirelessly to master light and fluffy scones (a/k/a biscuits) to help us create delicious and perfect batches in our own kitchens!
Traveling, festivals, dinner parties, marriages and relatives have kept both V and me busy.
V leaves tomorrow for US but I am staying in India for another month and half since lot of my close friends are getting married in November and in December I want to be here in India when a very special guest arrives in our family. 🙂
I have not cooked a bit since I left US for my 3 months vacation in India. I have a feeling by the time I go back I would have forgotten how to cook. We have hardly stayed at home for me to do anything related to cooking. If I have been home, I use that time to catch up on leftover sleep- since everyday we have been sleeping only after 1am and getting up early in the morning and busy with some work or the other the whole day. Yes, things have been that busy!
Luckily, I was able to finish this month’s challenge before leaving US. Its probably the quickest I have done a challenge. Of course later I had to pull a “me” by not drafting the post before leaving. As a result this post comes in a day late, even though the challenge had been completed in the first week of October.
The Daring Baker’s October 2011 challenge was Povitica, hosted by Jenni of The Gingered Whisk. Povitica is a traditional Eastern European Dessert Bread that is as lovely to look at as it is to eat!
Learn how to make fluffy and flaky homemade croissants with tips, step by step instructions and videos to help get the perfect croissants at home.
Updated to add on February 28th, 2018: I recently took a class on Craftsy.com on croissants and made a batch with the new techniques. They are slightly different from the ones mentioned here. For one, the recipe has eggs. Another is that the method of incorporating butter is slightly different and the Craftsy recipe also yields 24 croissants. I have had no issues with the recipe used here, so leaving the recipe as is but adding the techniques that helped me below.
Updated to add on November 20th, 2016: I have used this recipe many time now with good results. I managed to update the pictures on one of those tries, but have left some from the original post since I loved the results I got on my first try. Making croissants is a long process, but much of it is dough resting time. Although it takes two days for the entire recipe, but the end result is worth it- homemade fresh, fluffy and flaky croissants. I have also updated the post with printable version of the recipe.
The Original Post that went live on September, 2011:
In one of the scenes in the movie “It’s Complicated,’’ Meryl Streep and Steve Martin, go to Meryl Streep’s bakery. It is late at night and both of them are hungry, really hungry. She offers him anything on her bakery menu and he chooses chocolate croissants. The scene of her cutting and stuffing the croissants with chocolate is tantalizing.
That movie is one of my favorites, primarily because of Meryl Streep’s kitchen and the idea of owning and running a bakery like hers. I could watch that movie again and again, just to relive Meryl Streep’s life in the movie. The movie also makes me want to whip up croissants like that.
So when this month’s Daring Bakers’ challenge was to make croissants (something that had been on my to-do list for way too long), I was happy. Very happy.
The Daring Bakers go retro this month! Thanks to one of our very talented non-blogging members, Sarah, the Daring Bakers were challenged to make Croissants using a recipe from the Queen of French Cooking, none other than Julia Child!
Till date, the best croissants I have had were *drumroll* NOT in France. Would you believe it, I never tried the croissants when I was in France!! Well, we were in Paris for little over a day only and somehow I did not get the opportunity to try one! I guess its for the best- this way I owe the French croissants another trip!
The best croissants I have ever had were actually in Turkey where I had joined my parents for a vacation. We were staying in a small house kind of hotel/motel in the heart of Istanbul. Everyday the owner would serve us one croissant each with half a tomato, 3-4 olives, cheese and an egg cooked any way we liked. The owner used to get the croissants fresh from a nearby bakery. That croissant was the best I have ever had (and so was the breakfast) and the taste still lingers in my mouth. The croissant was exactly how it should be- buttery, flaky outside and moist inside. The crust would crackle when bit into. They were just perfect and delicious. If I had the cash, I would make a trip to Turkey just for those croissants!
