Basic Recipe: Croissants Made from Danish Pastry with Sourdough
Let's continue in the croissant test kitchen! With home-baked croissants, the journey is the reward. And because it takes a few steps until your Danish pastry has enough layers, it's all the nicer when you take the crispy and flaky croissants out of the oven. Until now, I have always cheated with a few crumbs of yeast. But with this recipe, that's no longer necessary. Die Croissants aus Plunderteig brauchen nur Sauerteig und keine Hefe. You can leave the dough to rest overnight.
Ingredients
- 300 g water
- 50 g sourdough starter
- 500 g wheat flour bread flour (or Typ 550)
- 50 g soft butter or vegan butter
- 25 g sugar
- 1 tsp. salt
Butter Layer
- 200 g soft butter or vegan butter
- 40 g wheat flour
Other
- egg or milk or a plant-based milk
Instructions
Day 1
- For the dough, mix the flour, water, sugar, salt, butter and sourdough starter.
- Cover the dough and leave to rest at room temperature for about an hour. Then stretch and fold once.
- In winter, leave the dough to rest overnight at room temperature. In summer, leave the dough to rest for two to three hours at room temperature and then place in the fridge overnight.
- For the butter layer, mix 200g soft butter with 40g flour. Then place in the centre of a sheet of baking paper. Fold the baking paper around the butter so that a 20 x 20 centimetre square of butter is enclosed in the baking paper. A rolling pin helps with this.
- Place the butter layer in the fridge overnight.
Day 2
- Roll out the dough into a square and place the butter plate (without the baking paper) in the centre of the dough. Fold the corners of the dough around the butter plate to form an envelope.
- First round: Carefully flatten the dough with a rolling pin* and roll out until you have an elongated rectangle.
- Fold in a third of the dough on the left-hand side and fold the right-hand third over it so that there are three equal layers of dough on top of each other.
- Wrap the dough in a tea towel and place in the fridge for 30 minutes.
- Then unwrap the dough again, carefully flatten with a rolling pin* and roll out into a long rectangle.
- For the second round, fold the rectangle in again to create three layers of dough.
- Perform a total of three rounds. Place the dough in the fridge for 30 minutes between batches.
- After the third round, the dough is rolled out into a large rectangle.
- Use a pizza cutter* to cut the long side of the rectangle into six equal pieces. Divide each of the six rectangles diagonally to create twelve triangles.
- Carefully stretch the triangles and roll them up under tension to form a croissant.
- Place the croissants on a baking tray, brush with milk, water or egg, cover and leave to rest for two to three hours - depending on the room temperature.
- Brush the croissants again with milk or egg before baking.
- Preheat the oven to 230 degrees using a steam tray consisting of a stainless steel oven dish* and lava stones*.
- Bake the croissants for 10 minutes with steam and about 20 minutes without steam or until they are golden brown.