Recipe: Sourdough Pain au Chocolat – French Chocolate Croissants
The French pain au chocolat has airy layers and a crispy crust. They are made from homemade Danish pastry dough, which is only made with sourdough and contains no yeast. You can leave the dough to rest in the fridge overnight.The chocolate croissants contain no eggs. If you replace the butter with a plant-based alternative and use vegan chocolate, you can even make the recipe vegan.
Ingredients
- 300 g water
- 50 g sourdough starter
- 500 g wheat flour bread flour (or type 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 bread flour (or type 550)
Other
- 100 g Chocolate sticks or chocolate chips for the filling
- 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 refrigerate overnight.
- For the butter sheet, 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.
- Cut the rectangle into twelve equal rectangles using a pizza cutter*.
- Place the chocolate on the short side of a rectangle and fold the edge over it. Place a second layer of chocolate on the edge and roll up the chocolate croissant.
- Place the pain au chocolat 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 chocolate 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 pain au chocolat for 10 minutes with steam and about 20 minutes or until golden brown.
