Homemade croissants are definitely a labor of love but when they come out of the oven they are all beautiful. They do take time to make, however, the method is actually really easy and this recipe will give you the beautiful homemade croissants. In a bowl, add in flour, salt, sugar, and dried yeast then mix all the dry ingredients together. Directly grate in frozen butter into the flour mixture, with grating, you will get really small, pea-sized pieces of butter which s exactly what you want.

Take a wooden spoon and just mix them throughout the flour, break down any big lumps of butter with your fingers, you want everything to be the same size. To that, add in warm milk and using a wooden spoon to bring it all together until it forms a soft dough. Push it together with your hands and start making the dough come together then cover it with a plastic wrap and pop it in the fridge for a minimum of an hour and a half. You want it to get nice and cold, the butter to chill so it will be much easier to roll.

Lightly dust your working surface with flour then place your pastry dough on top and using a rolling pin, roll it out nice and long and thick. Once rolled, you are going to do a book fold, which brings the pastry into the middle like a book and do with the other side too. Bring in the edges to the middle too then flip it over with the seams facing down. Roll the dough out again and repeat the book folding process again then wrap it in cling film and put it in the fridge, let it chill for a few hours or overnight.

Once the dough is nice and chilled, the next step is to roll it out and shape it into croissants. Roll it out until it’s about a quarter of a millimeter thick, trim off the edges of the pastry to get a nice straight line. To cut the croissants, measure the width of 3 inches and a length of 12 inches. Cut a little clit on the base of the triangle around an inch and because it is chocolate croissants, you will lay some chocolate disks in the middle. If you don’t like chocolate, you can simply leave it out.

Simply take the two edges, turn them outwards and gently roll up the croissants and repeat with the rest of the pastry until you are done. Once you are done, you can freeze them and whenever you want to bake, take them out of the freezer, proof them and pop them in the oven. Before baking them, brush them off with some egg wash because it gives them a lovely golden brown color. Bake them at 450 degrees oven for ten minutes then reduce to 375 degrees Fahrenheit for another 5 to 10 minutes.

Ingredients;

  • 1/2 cup (120ml/4floz) warm milk
  • 1 3/4 cups (250g/ 8 ¾ oz) strong bread flour
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 11 tablespoons (150g/5.3 oz) butter, frozen
  • 4 tablespoons (50g/ 1 ¾ oz) sugar
  • 2 tsp (7g /1 sachet) dry yeast
  • Chocolate chips or bar (I recommend 72% cocoa solids)
  • 1 egg yolk beaten with 1 tbsp milk to glaze

Instructions;

  1. Warm your milk until it is body-temperature (just warmed)
  2. In a large bowl add the flour, salt, sugar, and yeast and whisk to combine.
  3. Grate the frozen butter straight into your flour. You want pea-sized pieces of cold butter
  4. Pour in the milk and gently combine to a dough using a spoon until the dough just comes together.
  5. You want the butter to remain in pea-sized pieces so don’t be too enthusiastic when mixing the dough! don’t add liquid
  6. Turn the dough out of a lightly floured worktop and press together to form a square. It will be soft.
  7. Wrap in clingfilm and put in the fridge for 90 minutes
  8. Lightly dust your worktop and rolling pin with flour.
  9. Roll your dough out to a rectangle roughly 14 ½ inches by 10 inches
  10. Fold the short sides of the dough into the middle
  11. Rotate the dough by a quarter turn. Roll out slightly to lengthen. Fold the short ends towards the middle
  12. Flip the dough over so the seams are underneath. Roll it out again repeating the folding steps 2 more times.
  13. The dough will become more elastic as you are rolling and folding it. If at any point the butter softens too much, cover and pop in the freezer to firm it before continuing with rolling and folding.
  14. The dough should be formed into a smallish rectangle.
  15. Wrap it twice with cling film and put in the fridge for a couple of hours or, ideally, overnight.
  16. Roll the dough out to a rectangle three times as long as it is wide and at least 4mm thick. Trim the edges with a pastry scraper
  17. Cut the dough into triangles about 30cm/12in long and 8cm/3in at the base.
  18. Cut a small slit in the center of each triangle base
  19. Gently stretch the corners and tip, add your chocolate to the wide end then loosely roll the dough up.
  20. Place, tip side down, on a large tray lined with baking paper.
  21. Repeat with the rest of the dough, spacing the croissants a few inches apart on the tray
  22. Cover loosely with greased cling film and let the croissants rise for 2-3 hours at room temperature – sorry, there are no shortcuts here!
  23. Preheat the oven to 230C | 450F.
  24. Brush the croissants with the egg wash and bake for ten minutes then reduce temperature to 190C | 375F and bake for another 5 ish minutes or until the croissants are a deep golden brown.
  25. Cool on a wire rack before serving.