Daring Bakers: Fresh, Fluffy, French Croissants!

Croissants. They're what I wish I could eat every morning. Plain and flaky, overflowing with chocolate or dripping with almond paste. Toasted with egg and cheese. However you prepare them, I pretty much love them.

So naturally, I was delighted when I heard that The Daring Bakers would 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!

These croissants were not quick, but they were worth the trouble. Sarah estimated that the entire recipe would take about 12 hours if you went straight through. I opted for the longer route, refrigerating the dough overnight instead of completing all the steps in one day. With the slow, overnight rise, my dough still rose quite a bit.

If you look close, you can see all the layers in the dough!

I was surprised by the lack of fat in these croissants. Only one stick of butter and two tablespoons of oil. This made the croissants a bit healthier, but I think I prefer my croissants on the fattier end, and I've since looked at recipes that call for four sticks of butter. Something to dream about, I guess.

The dough is rolled out and folded up again several times, which creates an amazing amount of folds in the croissant dough, resulting in flaky final products.

I ended up with a delicious mix of traditional and chocolate croissants, although I wished I had made more chocolate ones. They were on the small size, which was just perfect for a quick snack.

I'll update later with a PDF file for the recipe (and hopefully the actual text of the recipe). Be sure to visit The Daring Kitchen to see other bloggers who dared to make croissants this month!