We're in Our Croissant Era, with the Baking School's Elisabeth Berthasavage

makers of the new countertop dough sheeter

built to elevate every bake ahead. No, the best pretzels are the ones you make at home. No. Not true. Yeah.

From King Arthur Bacon Company, this is Thing Spakers Now. I'm David Smarkin, King Arthur's editor director. And I'm Jessica Badalana, King Arthur's staff editor. And today, we are devoting the entire episode to flaky, buttery, quassal.

Look, teacher, I have no idea. Puzzle. Quassal? Puzzle. You know how we called them quesaints?

A crescent rolls. Or actually, that was more across the river and Kentucky. Quesaints? Quesaints? Yeah.

But yeah, I'm here to talk about it.

Um, and I'm going to offer a very, very early just opinion. I like just to get them in now, the top of the show. Yeah. That's right.

Ah.

“And tell you that I think the best quesaints are the ones”

that you can't eat without destroying your outfit. Okay. Like where they're shatteringly crisp. Lots of flaky shards of pastry and you're like, you get them all over your shirt. Oh, you're pants.

Right. The best pretzels are the ones you make at home. No. Not true. But we aren't talking about baking them at home.

Um, for anybody who does not know, though, let's back up and I, I don't think, I think there are very few people who don't know what a croissant is. But for those who don't know, croissants are laminated pastries. We've talked about lamination a lot because we're a baking podcast.

We're going to talk about it again. I'm going to give you the top line, which is that, uh, a laminated dough is when you take a relatively lean dough, meaning a dough that doesn't have a lot of fat in it. Can't have some. And you layer that with pure fat with butter and you roll it out.

You do a series of folds roll again, shape, fold, trim, roll, fold, roll. Look down. And then you have a dough that's layered with butter and it begs up into a very crispy thing because the butter melts, it lets off steam. The steam creates flakes.

Uh, that's the top line. And croissant is probably the most famous. And maybe the most delicious. Yeah. I think so.

A pastry. So you're making essentially a yeasted puff pastry.

“That's the, I'm glad you said that, that's the main difference, right?”

Yeah. That croissant is yeasted. Yeah. It has a little bit of yeast in it. I mean, there are sourdough versions, but I consider sourdough croissant, you don't

see them as much. The majority of the croissants you're going to find in bakeries are yeasted. Yeah. I'm not going to say better words. I'm just going to say more cops.

Sure. Yeah. Because I will run. I will not put down a string to run to a sourdough croissant. Will you?

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Lots of men are running towards sourdough croissant. Have you had a good one in New York City? Probably.

Yeah. Okay. I don't need to put you on this far. Here's the thing. Cressants, it seems like it should be something simple to talk about.

It's really not. No. Things have changed and what we think of as ideal croissant now and you seem to have some very strong opinions about that. Sorry, I want to dig into that.

But what you may be thinking of as ideal croissant may not have been the ideal croissant 20 years ago. I think that's true. And we've talked about this with so many things. I feel like we talked about this with Charles Chip Cookie, sourdough, bread, and something

we're going to be talking about that. We talked about this. We talked about that. This evolution over time. Exactly.

It's like sort of in-vogue, you're just going to use this many French words as I can in this episode. You know, I'm so sick of change, like anything's the same. It's a croissant.

I mean, and you're right, because when, you know, when I was growing up and I the first

croissant I had were at like chains like Oba and Pa, another series of French words. And they were, you know, they weren't as flaky. They were like a little doughier. Breadier. A little breadier.

“Now I think the style is, is, you know, these stored very flaky with like that.”

We've talked a lot about this internally here at Canira. This honeycomb structure. Yes. One of the things about Questhons is like, it's the great trick of the ages, right? That it is loaded with butter.

It's literally like more, I think, more butter by, you know, ratio than anything else. And yet, why so light? How so flaky? It's kind of miraculous, like sometimes, you know, you're eating a Questhons and you know, it's pure butter, but it just is like dissolving on your tongue.

I think that really is the difference between croissant and, you know, classic puff pastry, like I said, that yeast is really doing a lot of work. Yeah. It's creating an airy structure. And people want to, you know, they want to make Questhons at home.

We know this because like the class that we teach in lemonade does at our baking school

And we have Elizabeth, the instructor coming on the podcast later to talk about that

class and making Questhons at home. So people really want to try and like crack the coat at home. Not me, because they are a little fiddly. Okay. I mean, that's an understatement of the century.

They're fiddly. To make. To make. Yeah.

“And they're fiddly to make because, you know, you need to control the temperature”

of the butter and the dough, then you need to control the temperature when the dough is proofing, then you need to control the temperature when you're baking. And there's just, you know, in a home kitchen, there's so many variables that are harder to control and dial in with a precision that I think something like a Questhons requires. But people want to try.

People want to try. And we're going to try and help them. Okay. So things change. But some things don't change.

So what are the non-negotiables for a good croissant in your opinion? Butter. Well. I mean, I was like, yeah. It's true because I think when you get a lot of the super market Questhons or the taken

bake, or even some from, you know, like, I would say lesser bakeries, they're made with a combination of butter and, you know, some sort of vegetable shortening. And not only does it affect the texture, but of course, the flavor, like they are lacking that delicious, like, buttery flavor throughout. So I consider that to be a non-negotiable.

And that has not changed throughout time.

“I think, you know, the best Questhons have always been made with pure butter.”

You had a really interesting, like, little factoid about that. I did? About the shape of the Questhons. Oh, yes, I guess. I was reading that in France, all butter Questhons are straight, whereas, but of Questhons

that are made with a mixture of butter and a different kind of fat are curved. I don't know if it's universally true, but that is sort of the standard. You know, in France, they control a lot of things. They have laws about a lot of things, really, they did debate goods, like, the cost of baguettes and things like that.

So I don't think it's a law, but it seems to be the sort of a custom, so that at a glance you can be, like, imposter, real deal. I mean, how helpful would that be if we had that for other things? I love that. It's something that's so cool.

Good croissant also has a strong bake. And I know, necessarily, this is universally accepted. I think some people, like a sort of paleer bake on the croissant, I mean, some people, like a paleer bake on everything. Yes.

And those people are raw. You said, you said it, but I do think that a pale croissant is probably a flabby croissant

and you're not getting the maximum flake and I want to say crunch, you never want

like a super crunchier croissant, but there's a light crunch of crispiness. Yeah. Yeah, there's a little caramelization. Yeah. So, for me, oh, that's a non-negotiable from me, a strong bake, deep golden brown.

“No, I mean, I think there are lots of good examples of classic all-butter croissant out there.”

But you know, people can't resist, bakers can't resist, and consumers are baked goods, can't resist, like wanting to mess with a classic thing, right? So I think like as frequently as you see in all-butter plain croissant, you see like some crazy innovation happening now. Yeah, right, and I think we can maybe take this back to the croissant.

Oh, the croissant. I don't get started there, but I think that was like a sort of a lift off in terms of things you could do with the croissant. Can you tell people about the croissant? Basically, deep fry it.

Yeah, I mean, I would be surprised if people don't know, but the croissant is a pastry that was developed by Dominic Hansel in New York City at his bakery, but I think it's just

called Dominic Hansel, but I've never had.

I'm sure it's delicious, but it's a deep fried croissant dough that's then filled with you know, pastry cream or, you know, he's filled, he feels it seasonally with all sorts of things. And the idea is a mashup of a croissant and a donut. And a donut, right?

And I've never had any, have you ever had the real croissant? No, I've never had a croissant. Oh, yeah. I've never had a croissant. I've never had a croissant.

I've never had a croissant. I've never had a croissant. Oh, yeah. I've never had a croissant. I mean, I choose to.

Yeah. And I do think you're right that the croissant was like the point at which, you know, people were like, hold on, like that we can do more with this. And you started to see, you know, croissant, spaked in like square pans, you know, or croissant loaf, spaked in square pans, or in this form, which are, you know, baked

in circular molds, so they look like snails, like all curled out. Right. And they're so beautiful. Like very deeply brown on both sides, sometimes they're, like, filled. Right.

And then they're dip. They're dip, then they're topped with little candies or nuts. Those are sold at Lafayette in your city. And you know, and the croissant is often used as what I would call a scarcity bake, you

And I don't know if that's the turn.

Yeah, well, you know, in 2023, there was an article in the Wall Street Journal about something called the Quissant Theory. Oh. Yeah.

“So the Quissant Theory is this, you know, it's a business strategy, right?”

Like, popularized by bakeries. And basically, it is that scarcity, you know, you sort of create the special thing to drive demand, to build hype, to get people in line, and to sort of like increase, I think like, you know, sort of perceived value of the thing. Yeah.

And you don't make many of them. And they'll make some of these sort of, uh, a fervor for that. It's hard to get. And like, you know, then you get customers to post about it on social media. So it's like, you're intentionally just building the buzz.

Yeah. And I don't think you could do that with every bake good. I don't know. You know, you do that with a loaf of bread. I mean, the croissant is something special, really captures something for people.

It always feels a little special, I think.

I don't think anybody, I mean, in America is eating croissants every single day of their life. It's always a special occasion thing. Yeah. Yeah.

Tells me that that's often what the scarcity bake is. Yeah. Why the theory was named after croissants. Yeah. I would be curious to see, you know, I was in France last November.

And we certainly ate a lot of pastries, but I don't know that I saw, I mean, I'm sure they exist. But I didn't see as many like wild flavored croissants there as I see in American bakeries. Like now I feel like the fillings are like all, you know, it's no longer just like

penashakala, ham and cheese, plain, it's like, you know, whatever, it's like, use you can't, can't a mile. It's like, you know, to milk chocolate fill, like there's just like so much innovation happening, both in the form and in the flavor. Yeah.

I feel like super moon in Manhattan is doing a lot of work with flavors, colors.

“And, you know, honestly, another place I've never been, but I've heard, it's actually”

really good. That is not just a stick, that the quality is there too.

That's the thing, like I'm always a little skeptical when I see a croissant that's like

rainbow colored. Like this, this looks like a gimmick to me. I mean, that's the thing, like croissants are often used, can go gimmicky really fast. And I'm sure, I know, a lot of them are truly good. The one at Lafayette was developed by a pastry chef and I'm no scernic, I think, excellent

pastry chef. I mean, like, I mean, true, you know, true pro and I'm sure it's delicious, but if you want to make them at home yourself, yeah, you can do that. You can do that with a shot, you can make a shot with a shot with a shot at home by yourself if you're up for a little project.

We got to get into it. So everyone roll up your sleeves, wipe the sweat from your brow. Right. Because actually, this is not something that you and I can talk about amongst ourselves, because we don't do that.

I mean, I believe you can, but should you? I don't know. We're going to drill down on that, but we are going to get some help on the question

“of, can you, how do you, from our baking school, instructor Elizabeth Bertha Savage?”

Yes. How? And the why? And the why? Yeah.

Elizabeth is a longtime instructor at our baking school and she has a really, really good new on-demand class, all about lamination, intro to lamination. So she covers croissants, she also covers Danish with, honestly, sort of like, where I want to try, and if you other things and she's got a very just chill teaching style, yeah.

Really makes you feel like you can do anything? Yeah, I know. So we're going to talk to her, and at the end of this podcast, and in a few, you and I, we're going to head to the kitchen. We're going to do this for some.

Elizabeth, thank you so much for being here on Things Pickers Now. I thought we would just start with probably the biggest question, which is why is it even worth it to make a croissant at home? Well, you know, I feel like, and I often pull the students, like, where are you here today?

Like, what brings you to came out through a baking company and to this class in particular, and I feel like a lot of students will say, oh, croissants are so delicious, and they're also cost driven. So, you know, the average cost of a croissant really is from a nice bakeries, anywhere from four to eight dollars, and so that really adds up, and if you want this delicious

pastry, a couple times a week, there you go. Now you can't afford your coffee. So, or your mortgage. Yeah, exactly. So, I mean, I feel like that's usually what it comes down to.

It's a great point. I wonder if you see this in your students, when I do something like lamination at home, it's truly because it's fine, and it's a project, and it's a challenge. It's not as much for me about the process as it is about the end result.

Hey, it's Francis Lamb, host of the Splendid Table Podcast.

Every week on a show, we celebrate the intersection of food and life. In this month, we're releasing a new series called Culinary Masters, and it highlights some of those iconic people in the food world, and we're revisiting conversations with people who have fundamentally changed how many of us cook and think about food. People like Jacques Mephan, Claudia Rodin, and Tony Bourdain, the name of few.

You can listen to this special series now. Just search for the Splendid Table and your podcast app.

“Yes, definitely, I think it's funny because most of the students that walk through that”

door, and I can say this for a lot of topics, but she with laminations, two-thirds of them,

have never even tried, and have no idea what they're walking into, but then you have

like that one-third who have tried it, and they really have gained a respect to or for the process. And so they're there to really understand what they're doing wrong, and then the other students were there because, hey, this sounds fun. I love croissants, I'd like to make them at home, and I may go both ways, so it's definitely

worth it to try it at home, for sure. But what are the main differences between making a croissant at home and making a croissant

in a professional setting?

“So working in a professional setting, there definitely are a lot of crutches that are used,”

but I would say the primary one that makes it, I would say, easier in a commercial setting is going to be the proof box because you have complete, almost complete control over what's happening, the timing, so you've got the temperature, you've got humidity, and, I mean, you can even like get it going the night before, all shaped on the speed rack in the proof box, have it on cold, and then have it times so that it pops on to proof, when you're

still at home, that kind of thing, right? So that's probably one of the challenges with at home, like for the home baker, is the proof. There are ways to emulate a proof box at home, which are your favorite ways.

“So my favorite way, and I talk about this in the on demand class, too, is using your home”

oven, because obviously it's not turned on to 400 degrees at this point, but use your home oven, and that's where you can place your sheet pan with your croissants, because the home oven is sort of a little box, it is safe for many drafts, and if I have my oven light on, and I only know this, because I have it in street thermometer, I can put in the oven, I know I can get that little box up to 72 degrees, so that's a lot warmer than my kitchen,

because in the winter time, my kitchen is like 60, 61 degrees, it's very cold, so use your oven, like, it's a tool, and then I also use, I get some hot water, like in a place out of my oven, so sort of give it a little bit of humidity, because that's actually going to help with the fermentation, yeast will be much happier, so, you know, every 30 minutes, I set a timer for this, too, and a little bit, I'm a little excessive about it, but I set

a timer for the, for the mug of hot water, and I'll swap that out every 30 minutes, so, and when I know that I'm getting close, and I only know that from experience, I'll pull out that sheet pan, put it on my counter, get my oven preheated. Nice, so, oven light on, a cup of steaming hot water, that's replaced on a regular basis, you have a great proof box. You mentioned that proofing croissants is different from proofing

bread, what do you mean by that? Well, you know, like, oftentimes in recipes with bread, it'll talk about, you know, especially with loaf pan breads, it'll crust and inch above the edge of the pan. At least, you know, take your finger, poke it, just make it sure it feels pillowy and soft, and that is true with croissants, they should feel pillowy, marshmallowy, even when you give like that sheet pan a little shake, you know, a timer, too, it will just like wobble

back and forth. So, there's a lot of that that you're looking for, but I feel like students kind of

way, and it's really not the case with croissants. So, I just feel like it's such a specific shape,

“too, and you have to look for a slightly different identifier to say, hey, these are ready.”

So, often I also mentioned, try to peel back the layers, like almost with your finger, you can kind of see the layers that you've created by peeling them back. That's also really cool to see, you can see the separation. And if you can see the layers clearly, that's a sign that it's well-proofed. Yes, that is one of the signs for sure, and also that marshmallowy pillowy feel to this to the croissants? Yes. I think there are some big, well, in general, I think that home

bakers a lot of them don't prove enough in general. I think, I think, where I think we are a world of

chronically underproofproofing bakers. But I do feel like there are some big where you want to push the proof even farther, or even further than others. For example, I think with Hala, I try to push myself to push that final proof as far as possible, because I know that's going to give me the best shape and the best structure of my Hala. And it can be hard sometimes, because I don't like the way I get impatient. Is it our croissants in that camp for you? Do you

feel like they benefit from a really just really pushing that proof and trying to get it as jiggly and marshmallowy as possible? Or do we really have to pay extra close attention to not overproofing, because we'll, you know, experience some collapsing in the oven? You know, yeah. Well, there's only a fine line. So, but, yes, I do overall, I do overall really agree that

“it can benefit from a proof that you're really pushing to its max. But I think where people sort of”

stumble, best you with croissants where you have this layering of butter in between, a longer proof, or shall I say, like, a longer or overproofing process can actually get that butter too soft, especially if you're not in an environment, or these are not proofing in an environment that's terribly controlled with temperature. And then if you get the butter too soft by giving it that longer proof, what can happen in the oven then is that butter to, well, it has the tendency to leak.

And then you're going to see pools of butter on your sheet pan and you're going to wonder why. And then the sort of the texture of the overall product is going to be somewhat denser, somewhat chewier, a very lackluster, you know, oven spring, you know, it's just going to, like,

“not be great. And so you have to be careful. And I think, you know, for students who are new to this,”

I would just look for those identifiers that I described and keep it at that, especially if you don't have complete control over where these things are proofing. There's overproofing's not great, but also underproofing is equally not great. Yeah, okay. So it is not good advice to say, just push it, just push it, push it, push it, you know, we gotta pay attention. I think with experience, yes, within time, yeah, okay.

This is all been wonderful, this is a bit, but to close out, I want to make sure that we're giving, giving everybody your top tips, what is, what is the number one piece of encouragement you give to students when they're making croissants at home? And then, um, trust the process. Because it is a process and don't be afraid to make mistakes, because you gotta learn from those mistakes. I've learned from them, we've all learned from them.

So give yourself a pat in the back, just for trying. I love that. Like so much baking advice, it's just life advice to it, right? So I really appreciate that. Yeah. Absolutely. Well, thank you so much, Elizabeth, for coming on the show, and demystifying croissants for us. Uh, again, folks can check you out live in person at the Vermont baking school and also in our on-demand classes, whichever it'll about can authorbaking.com.

Yeah, you welcome. Thanks for having me. This episode is brought to you by Brought and Taylor, achieving even and consistent

layers has always been one of the trickier parts of laminated dough, but the Brought and Taylor

counter top dough sheeter makes it nearly full proof. The amazing thing about this dough

so it's the right scale. It's compact enough to fit on your counter top, but it fulfills the mission

“of a professional dough sheeter, giving you like those beautiful layers of butter and dough.”

And then when you're done using it, it's easy to break down and store. Yeah, when I retire and become a cottage bakery, only doing croissants at a mine little Manhattan apartment. I'm going to make use this dough sheeter. Every fold, every layer, just right, find the counter top dough sheeter at Brought and Taylor.com. This episode is brought to you by Supernatural. Supernatural makes sprinkled food colors and flavors that are completely colored by plants fully traceable and

totally free from anything artificial or synthetic. And it's just a proven fact. It is just a proven fact that sprinkles make everything more fun. So you can add them to your pancake better, you can sprinkle them on your ice cream. And of course, you can use them to top a frosted cake.

“You can find supernatural sprinkles, food colors, flavors and more at King ArthurBaking.com,”

and the full line is available at supernaturalkitchen.com. This episode is brought to you by our on-demand baking school classes. Did you know that we have on-demand classes that you can take

anywhere, anytime, as many times as you like, which is very handy. Like me, you don't always get things

the first time. I have been that person. You want to watch it. You want to watch it. You want to rewatch. And if this episode has inspired you to make quests on to home, I mean, God bless you. Good luck. But we have two classes that can help. One top by our baker will help monitors all about quests on. And the second class, that's our intro to lamination class, top by today's guest, Elizabeth Barthusavage. She'll teach you to make quests, but also other laminated pastries,

like Danishes. You can find all of our on-demand classes at KingArthurBaking.com/baking-school. It's time for our next segment, Ask the Bakers. For Ask the Bakers, we want to hear from you. If you have a baking question for us, head to KingArthurBaking.com/podcast to record a voice message and we may end up using your question on the show. That's KingArthurBaking.com/podcast.

And of course, if you have a question that simply cannot wait, you can always reach out to the

Bakers hotline via phone, email, or chat, just call us at 855-371-2253. That's 2253 as in "Baked" or go to KingArthurBaking.com/bakers-hotline. That's Bakers-hotline. Let's hear our first question. Hi, so let's talk to Flower. I understand about protein content for gluten formation, but I don't really understand about Ash when you look at and when you look at the French flowers, they talk about T45, T55, and they're Ash content. And the reason I ask is because I see a lot of

quest-on and like vialosary recipes that talk about protein content and then the French ones talk about Ash percentage. And so I'm not quite sure how to find what the best flower is for. Quasant weather, I can just use Brett Flower, whether she used his T45 stuff. So if you could look me up with an answer, that'd be great. Thanks. This is the next level of question. This is a challenging question. So the good news for this Baker is that they don't

really need to think about Ash content if they don't want to, because baking are with our milling partners, we've already thought about it. That's not a very satisfying answer though, right? So we're going to get into it a little bit. So when we talk about Ash content, you know, we each flower has its own specifications for the Ash content. But it invites this bigger question of like, what is Ash content? And I'm going to give the nickel version, which is,

you know, when you take and this is, you know, in a controlled environment, you take flower, you burn the flower. What's left behind is the Ash content. And that is represented as a percentage of the total amount of flower. And that's the minerals left in a flower. So the more refined the flower, the less Ash content. So white flower, for example, is like 0.55% Ash content. And in France, that would be called like a T55 flower, where is something like a whole wheat flower,

because, you know, there's more to burn, there's more endosparm. That's going to be, you know,

“higher percentage of Ash after this burn. So maybe like 1.5% something like that. So that's what”

we're talking about when we talk about Ash content. In France, they usually speck T45,

Here in the States, and when we're talking about the King Arthur flowers, you know, a 0.55 flower is going to be our all-purpose flower. So the AP flower will give you great, I mean, will it give you great results? It will give you the closest to sort of a French flower that we have access to here. You do want some strength in your dough, because it is, you know, it is rising. You do need gluten. And you do need the proteins in the dough to capture the carbon dioxide that

the yeast. Right, which one would use like a cake flower or like a pastry flower, you know, you do need something that has a bit of strength in it. Well, you don't want to go that other way. Exactly, you don't want to make it, because you don't want them to be tough, like you want them to remain light. So that is, I think that, I mean, I hope that answers the question, but it's, I mean, I think Ash is content is something that professional bakers think about a lot. I know our milling partners think

about a lot. And we have specifications for that, but for a home baker, I think it's not, you know,

“I don't think it's hugely important information to know. And that's why we don't include”

it all, the bags of our flower. So the bottom line for this color is use an all purpose flower,

or if you are in France a T 55? T 55 or T 45, I think are the standard flowers for quests on sale. And, you know, there are, there is such a thing as a whole week quests on, that's all to say about that. That's another episode. So I hope that's helpful, but let's, let's hear our next question. Haking Arthur, this is Julia in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and I was gifted a home feeder. I love the idea of it, but it takes up so much space. Is it worth it to keep it?

When I already have rolling pins, would love to hear your thought. Thanks. I like the style of this, this baker calling, this baker is a serious one. You know,

first of all, let's just talk about what a cheater is. A cheater is a piece of machinery commonly,

most commonly found in professional bakeries that are doing a lot of lamination. They look like, they look like baggages, carousels, right? They do, yeah, exactly, yeah. You send, and what happens is, you send your dough and your butter block through these cheaters, and they make it thinner and thinner. It's almost like a, like a pasta machine. Yeah, so it's like a conveyor belt with rollers. So it, like, you roll it one way, and then you might fold it manually on the other end and turn it,

and then you roll it back through the rollers. It is an automated way to do what we would do with the rolling pin. Right, and it makes it laminated very consistently and very quickly, and which is good because, you know, one of the hard things about making croissants at home, which we've talked about, and the service of a lot is controlling the butter temperature, and the quicker you can do it, the more your butter will stay at the same temperature. Sure.

So there was a home version of this piece of equipment called a shear. That was recently, fairly recently brought to market. Yeah, I think it's brought in Taylor, does it? And we, and we love brought in Taylor products. We talk about their home proof for a bunch, and they, there's a, a bread steel bread cup, one of the, they have a bread steel, and then a cover from that suit to make, you know, so that you can bake loaves in gas oven. So yeah, big fan of their products,

I think a sheeter is very cool. The idea of having a sheeter at home. I love that idea.

I've never made a croissant of my life, but I love that idea. I think if you're going to do it,

“you should probably make croissants without a sheeter. I'm going to say a dozen times.”

Yeah. Know that you really love making croissants at home before you invest in a sheeter. I think if you were one of the people out there that's like has a cottage bakery business, you know, and you wanted to expand into laminated pastries. Like, I might be, or, you know, if you're just a gear head and you want to like tinker around with something like, I think it would be fun. I've never used one. I can't really justify the space. I don't think for the amount of times I make

croissants at home, I'm holding up at zero. But I think they are interesting. And I mean, I also just think what's cool that is that it's sort of, you see this trend toward things that were once just the purview of professional baker, like equipment to, you know, now making the way into home kitchens. And that's like, that's fun. It's interesting to see.

“This may not be the one that I pick up, but I think it's cool to see that they're now like looking”

toward very ambitious home bakers when they're thinking about what tools and products to bring to market. So do it the hard way first and then take the easy way out for shooting. Exactly. Let's tear an expression. What's the best letter to make croissants? Should I use

Yes, I think in this situation, European butter is the go-to. I mean, that's our recommendation.

“Yes, European. And the reason why is because European butter, well, it has more butter”

fat and it has less water, more butter fat than American style butter, American style comes in around 80 European style comes in at least 82, 8.845, you know, in that range. Yeah. And what that extra butter effect does is helps the butter remain pliable when you're doing all your rolling and stacking and folding and rolling again and, you know, I mean, you do want ideally a butter that can like bend. And that's the ultimate state. Yeah. And it's easier to get that with

European butter. Yeah, and you don't know. I mean, now there are true European made butter available in the states, you know, blue grabbing one brand. But there's also lots of

domestically made European, I'm putting it in quotes here. European style butter that have

that higher butter fat percentage here at the King Arthur. Kitchens we use the cabinet, which is a Vermont, you know, butter company and theirs comes in at about 82% butter fat. But, you know, there's also one from Vermont, Creamery like there are quite a few domestic manufacturers. So you can just look for something that says European style on it. And then, you know, it should boast about the butter fat percentage. So more butter, more butter is right. I mean, it's

our next seizure is my new bumper sticker. All right, let's see what Jessica has to say. Every episode, we love to check in with Jessica here, but while he's surprised, and full-threaded opinions are in her head, I say, we lovingly call it just opinions. And Jessica, you have a croissant just opinion. Of course I do. Of course I do. Of course I do. I mean, you've given a few already.

Yeah, I mean, as always, I can't limit it to this one. But we were talking at the top of the show

about flavored, you know, how, like now, croissants are in their shapes differently, they have different flavors. Yeah, evolution. Yeah, evolution. Yeah, and I'm in support of evolution.

“Two a degree. Yeah, I believe in evolution. But you know what is a crime against humanity is the”

croissant that is stuffed, and then also topped with chocolate chip cookie dough. Why? Why? Okay, yes. So in case there's delicious, yes, chocolate chip cookie dough, delicious, they don't need to be combined. Okay, for people who may have missed this trend on social media. Glad for you. These were, this was a trend where people were taking, it seemed like store-bought croissants. Yes. And maybe store-bought cookie dough. Yes.

Splitting open the baked croissant, putting raw cookie dough in, God, I mean, stomach and the croissant, and then baking it. No, then closing the croissant, and then sometimes putting more cookie dough on top. Okay. And then baking. And then baking it. Yes. So what you got was like a sort of baked chocolate chip cookie on top of a croissant, and inside, unbaked, but hot, like melted cookie dough.

Unbaked? I mean, it was baked, but like, soft baked, right? Like a, and I will say you say at home, it wasn't just at home, David. Oh, really? Professionals were doing this. Professionals are doing this out of the world. Yeah. Okay. I'm not going to name names, but I've seen it. You're not going to name it, but you're going to be, you know, writing some tickets. Yeah, exactly. I'm going to be writing some tickets. I just think,

you know, there's sometimes, like, it just goes too far. These trends go too far. And we all know, like, people love to have cookies. We all know that croissants are delicious. And that's fine. Like, just, they don't need to be. I will say, you know, it's not like the, the twice baked croissants does not have a precedent. It just has like a much class success. There, there, there, there is a precedent for this, which of course, the almond croissants. Yes. Which I don't think

“people would know, which I think that that's what we're talking about. I don't think people know that”

the classic almond croissants is a day old croissants. That's been split and, you know, so usually. Yeah, so it was some simple syrup to, you know, revive it and then you filled with some French opinion. Yeah. In the same spot, like, in the middle, some on top, sometimes. And then rebate. So, and that's the way it's supposed to be. Yeah. Sometimes people, you know, I think some bigger sound make fresh almond croissants and that's enough, right? No, no. I mean, I think you want, like,

actually the structure of a deal. Like, you wanted to kind of, and think it, you know, you're kind of handling those a little more roughly. Yeah. That's fine. I like an almond croissants. Yeah. So, you, so the twice baked croissants is not your issue of the twice baked croissants. It's the cookie dough. Yeah. Just leave it alone. So that's what I got for you this week. Yeah. No need to have for me this

not this week. But I'm going to do something that's sort of vagaling the shape, which is, uh,

“syrup on or the salt bread. Oh, yeah. Talk about trend. Yeah. So, this was 20, a couple months ago,”

we got Cat Liu, a baker to do recipe for us. Um, this is a bread that is shaped vaguely. It's like a kind of a crescent shape. So it's vaguely croissants. And uh, the dough is shaped around a nub of butter. Yeah. So that when it breaks, you have this kind of hole in the middle. But it's also like this buttery, I mean delicious thing. Yeah. Yeah. So it seems really fun. I haven't baked it yet. Yeah. I want to try it. Yeah. I want to try it. You could entry level way to roll

dough around butter. Yeah. I don't get something delicious. Yeah. Yeah. And I could tell people, I guess it's a crescent. What do you mean? Yeah. It's like, no, I did, no, I make your songs here. It is. Well, you know what? I, this is, I, maybe I've talked about this before, because it really is something that we make all the time. But the book of pizza came out just about a month ago.

“Oh, yeah. Um, so we make the weeknight Detroit pizza all the time now. Um, and I love it because”

pan pizza feeds more people. Yeah. Really like pretty low stakes. I don't have to like be, you know, shoveling browns of pizza dough off and all, you know, in and out of the oven. Totally. Um, and it's, you know, we have some suggestions in the book for how to top it. But I find you can be pretty freewheeling with that dough and still get a great pizza. So when you're always doing cheese

first on that. I always do cheese first and I do cheese right up to the edge of the pan and I

didn't invest in one of the Lloyd Detroit pans, which are, um, you know, the anodized aluminum dark anodized aluminum, which makes a huge difference. Like you really get a truly crisp crust and that like freak out edge. And then, you know, like once you get the cheese down like everything else is gravy, like you can do saw red sauce, which is my kid's preference. But I also do, there's a, the recipe in the book for, you know, you and I are at odds with this ingredient, but, um, broccoli

rob one of my top ingredients and it's black olives and broccoli rob and cheese and that's really good. And, um, and it's just one of many things you can do with that dough. So that one is truly like, and you can make you an afternoon, like you can think about, right? Well, it's a three p.m. Yeah. And at six p.m, you can be eating that pizza and everyone will be happy. So

“yeah, it's a great pizza. Yeah, I can't make that too many times. Um, so that's what I'm going to do”

and then I'm going to be back with you next week for another episode. Mm-hmm. In the interim,

we always appreciate listeners tuning in to us here on Things Bakers No. Yeah. Oh, yes, we showed you.

And remember, it's a like and subscribe on Apple Podcasts YouTube, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you're listening to your podcast. Also, if you're on something, give us a subscribe there. Check us out there. We're sending out new letters that align loosely to these, to these episodes. And we're having a good time over there. So please check us out. I also, I mean, we do read the reviews. I always do. Yeah. Oh, do we. Yeah. Oh, we read them through in our heads while we can't sleep at night.

So leave us a review and also share episodes with friends that love to bake. So they know about us. And in between writing reviews, people don't forget, follow the recipe, especially when you're making croissants, especially when you're making croissants. Things Bakers No is hosted and executive produced by me, David, to market and me, Jessica, Patelana. Rossi and Astopulo with our senior producer, Chad Chennai is our producer and Marcus Bagala is our engineer, original music by Megan

and Marcus Bagala. Thanks again to our colleague Elizabeth Barthusavage for joining us on today's

episode. You can learn from Elizabeth online or in-person at our baking school. She's an amazing

instructor. It would be a gift to yourself or to somebody you love to give them that on demand class. We're just on them here to Vermont to the real-life baking school. Right. If you can get in. If you can get in, hottest ticket in town and you can find more about all of these classes at KingArthurBaking.com/baking-school. Things Bakers No is a King Arthur baking company podcast. This episode is brought to you by a new collaboration between King Arthur and Supernatural.

Supernatural of course is the maker of America's brightest, diverse sprinkles and we are putting those sprinkles in our new confetti cake mix and confetti sugar cookie mix. Let me tell you something. I made the cake and I made it to an ice cream cake. It was gorgeous. It was celebratory. It was like my birthday but it wasn't even my birthday. Find both mixes at target.target.com and of course at KingArthurBaking.com.