Hey David - couple of ideas. Some people say that yeast doesn’t rise well in milk; that’s why it’s often proofed in water. I noticed when you tested, you used water and it worked, but your recipe was all milk. Also, that recipe has A LOT of salt in it for the size - for comparison, The NY Times croissant recipe is nearly half again as much for most ingredients and uses almost the same amount. Also, I’ve noticed a lot of chefs shifting to Diamond kosher salt, because it’s “less salty.” They recommend cutting the salt by half when using Morton’s. Lastly, I’ve done some experimenting with yeast and Red Star has been difficult to work with. It seems more prone to failing. Fleishman’s has been a consistent winner in my family for decades. I’d compare to some other reliable croissant recipes and I think you’ll find the proportions off. I couldn’t even find Babish’s recipe on his website, so maybe that’s why? Hope this helps - love your videos, keep it up!!
@@rickydona919 Yep, me too. I baked a lot of bread over the winter, and I found Red Star yeast failed on me about half the time when I used milk vs. water. So, if I use milk, I always proof first and throw a small amount of sugar in with it. Once I was able to get Fleishman’s again, I didn’t have any problems. Don’t know if it’s the yeast, the milk, or a combination of both. :)
@@everythingbutthegirlfan762 or it could be because of the amount of salt.. salt makes the yeast inactivate.. so that could be one reason too.. I normally makes my bread with warm milk and it always rises perfectly
@@elizabethbanks2074 not quite. Yeast can't produce lactase to break down milk sugars. It could even be detrimental if you used full cream/full fat milk since fat slows down fermentation.
In Claire’s most recent video on her channel, she talked about having to adjust the flour and water in her dough for her bougie pigs in a blanket because of how dry it was in her basement where she stored her flour. Maybe you’re having the opposite issue? It’s too humid, so adding more flour would be ok, but also adding more of the rising agent (yeast as well?) As you increased the flour, you would probably want to keep the same volumetric ratio of yeast in your mixture.
Edit: read through the comments and watched your measurements again. Jay is right. Babish says 180g of each type of flour but you did 180g and 108g (understandable, I almost made the same mistake when writing it down.) That would definitely contribute haha. Hard to say how your additional flour affected the percentages but I based my math on the recipe. I’m going with salt as your culprit. I don’t know what salt Babish is using in his croissants, but in his (admittedly old) pantry essentials video he says he likes to use Diamond. His recipe doesn’t specify a gram weight but a quick google search suggests that a tablespoon of Morton’s is 15g whereas a tablespoon of Diamond is 10g due to their different crystal sizes. With those estimates, Babish’s salt was ~2.8% of the flour weight whereas yours was 4%. Most dough recipes will be 2%. Salt inhibits fermentation activity (your yeast making CO2, etc) so that high of a salt percentage could have really slowed or maybe even killed your yeast (can’t find a good source on what concentrations will kill it though.) The other thing could just be that you didn’t get enough gluten development with the pastry flour (whole wheat won’t help you here) and very short mixing time. Also honestly it’s not a great recipe and some of his techniques are questionable lol Source: am pastry student
Tablespoon of one thing is 10g, tablespoon of other thing is 15g... That's why everyone should use metric instead that stupid american shit of a system
The first is the flour type…you don’t really have to use pastry flour and measurements of it..:use King Arthur ap. and then the salt inhibiting gluten development…also use table salt and your liquid needs to be at 70 degrees….
The Icelandic smjör strikes again. Im so happy to see it, a small percent of that comes from my cows. My Icelandic heart is now whole. Continue being awesome David!
I’ve never used pastry flour when making croissants, always straight bread flour, King Arthur brand specifically. Maybe the flour was the issue. I use Paul Hollywood’s recipe, and it’s never failed me.
I used to have that scale and I thought it was very inaccurate. Try another scale. As far as the rising goes, yeast will die when it comes in contact with the salt directly, so try to add the yeast to the milk while you mix all the dry ingredients, and then add the yeast-milk mixture to the dry ingredients and go from there. Hope that helps!
My best guesses as a baker are that there was too much salt in the dough and the milk wasn't warm enough, and there could have been too little sugar in the dough. Salt slows the yeast down and instant yeast needs more sugar to activate. To help you with the rolling, the dough and butter should be about the same consistency. The butter should be slightly soft and not super cold, other wise it won't roll. Hope this helps! ☺
At a cursory glance it’s likely that the issue is with the recipe and specifically protein content of differing flours. Pastry flour in the US has a protein content of 8-9 percent. Pastry flour in France (where most recipes originate) is more likely 11-14 percent. The less protein in flour the less gluten. The less gluten the less structure and the less rise. Add that to only two minutes of mixing (even with the bread flour at 11 percent protein added) is not long enough to form gluten and thus you didn’t get a rise. Thus to fix this, use only bread flour. Mix for six to eight minutes instead of two minutes. The butter problem was probably due to not enough gluten formation to give you individual layers of dough when you folded. Edit: Also as a rule of thumb: if a dough is still too sticky after you’ve followed the instructions, I always knead (mix) more before adding flour. Reason being is if you add more flour to firm it, you haven’t created more gluten, you’ve just given it more stability via flour. Gluten will naturally firm up your dough over time if you build enough of it
David Seymour: Chocolate croissant! Most of France: No you silly American, it's pain au chocolat! Quebec and Southwestern France: Don't listen to those fools, it's CHOCOLATINE! Belgium: Couque au chocolat, take it or leave it
your attempt was great and any attempt of baked goods is always appreciated- as a pastry chef yea the idea of making croissants in the summer is not good at all. humidity, temp, all played a part here. rising it is best around 20 degrees in your oven if it has a rising setting or u can basically create the environment needed yourself in it, like a stove. this is one of the most challenging doughs n keeping it in the right temp is crucial but you did a great job regardless David!!
Just want to agree with everyone else saying this as a home-cook and home-baker. Things that probably went wrong: brand of flour used (different brands can have tremendous different amount of gluten, proteins, and other contents), humidity (affects the amount of flour that needs to be used in the first place), potentially TOO warm of a spot for rising the dough, though not sure about that one.
Yes- the flour part! American have sooo many variations of flour. When all you need is regular fine ground flour. It might not be just the brand, it might be the type of flour.
I agree, this is likely the main issue with what happened. Good recipes with flours should tell you the flour characteristics (just the protein content can make or break the entire recipe), plus the same recipe in January would probably not work in July due to heat and humidity differences. That's something professional bakers know and always take into account, but it takes a lot of experience in knowing how to alter a baking recipe...
Definitely agree with the brand of flour and humidity being the main issues. I tried making Claire's focaccia bread recipe from her first cookbook and I had to add so much flour to it. After watching her RUclips video about that bread, I believe she mentioned how she had really low humidity where she was testing the recipe. Didn't realize how big a factor humidity was when making bread. I noticed that you used whole wheat flour; it absorbs liquid differently than an all purpose bread flour blend.
It helps to activate the instant yeast in your Milk with the sugar until the foam almost overflow for the container at à température around 45' celsius. ( it reduces the amount liquide à little bit also ) For the layering, keep butter room temp. Roll it between two wax paper, to max 1 cm thick when you get the shape you want you let it rest in the frige until it is hard again, butter shape in à square of 2 thirds of your rectangle of dough. You place the butter on the upper 2 thirds of the dough, so you fold the last third of the rectangle over the butter to the half, then fold the other, so you start your folding process with alreay even layers. Love your content! Keep on cooking!
I don’t know about the yeast, but I want to say how beautiful your work looked throughout the video. Everything looked so precise and well done. It’s a bummer they didn’t turn out.
Oh david, making croissants is SUPER HARD! Do not be so hard on yourself!! seriously. you always kill it but these are UNDERSTANDABLY super challenging.
I wonder if the butter was too warm in the initial dough? I haven't seen this particular recipe but it looked quite greasy and when I've made croissants I add cold butter to the detremp and let it get worked. I also add the butter after working the dough a bit so that some gluten can form before the fat starts interfering. I've also had to proof my final shaped croissants/pains aux chocolats for up to 3/4 hours in my frigid apartment before they are ready to be baked, which helps the layers separate before baking. It also looked like your butter block was maybe too cold compared to your dough when you were laminating, and the butter block wasn't extending all the way to the edges which could gum up some of your layers. It's important that the butter extends with the dough and you should be able to see it spreading all the way out under the surface
I'm doing a baking course and we did the argentinean version of Croissants. We used very cold butter as well as letting the dough chill in the fridge several times, so maybe that could be a reason
I’m surprised the recipe called for pastry flour; I’ve made croissants before and the recipes have always called for bread flour.. I would try a French Pastry chef’s croissant recipe if you would like to give it another go.. or Claire Saffitz’s recipe
Babish's recipe calls for both bread and pastry flour. I think that is where he went wrong. Pastry flour alone doesn't have enough protein to create good gluten to allow the yeast to work.
Several issues with the recipe: 1. Hydration for laminated dough is ideally around 50+-4% while this recipe is 66% hydration. 2. A Blend of bread flour along with AP is preferred to assist with crumb structure. 3. Milk inhibits the formation of Gluten, which is why pastry flour in this particular circumstance would never be advised. 4. Substantially easier to hydrate flour with predominantly water as opposed to milk. 5. Butter blocks are nearly always 50% of the weight of flour; however, Babish's recipe is nearly 63%. The recipe needs substantial revision to yield a good outcome; therefore, it is the recipe, not you!
Very interesting, it's always nice when someone knows what they're talking about and can say exactly what went wrong. David should have at least been able to get the results that binging with babish was getting though 🤔
Yes. I was thinking along the same lines as you. Ive been taking croissants for about 10 years now, and ive never used milk in any of my recipes. A couple times i used milk powder, but it was like 8-10 grams for a 12 crox batch. My dough is always 52% because that's what works for me in my kitchen/home. I use almost 100% bread flour simply for the higher protein that 14% region. It also looked like he was rolling the dough with the butter being way too cold, which led to it breaking apart.
i live in the philippines where its always humid af. i followed joshua weissmans recipe for croissants to a T and it was beautiful. maybe try that? ive made it several times and they always come put beautifully
David forgot the most important part of baking a successful and perfect croissant- *praying to an ancient deity and sacrificing the family member you love most*
I wonder if there's an issue with the humidity and your flour? Since pan au chocolat (and any croissant dough) has a lean dough that has butter laminated into it, the proportions of temperature and humidity in the flour make a significant difference to the texture, workability, and ratios used in the recipe. This is especially true if youre using a different flour than they are, which is most likely the case, even if they're based in NY. Also, my suspicion is when you put it outside, the dough in the metal bowl and the heal may have gotten too hot and killed the yeast, although I'm not sure if that's the case. Who even knows with this sort of baking though-as an amateur baker myself, I hate making laminated doughs because they're messy, time intensive, and almost never work out when I do them either. These are just a couple of things I've learned over the years that may at least explain some of your heartache, even if only a little. Hope it can be of use!
I think the reason it didn’t rise well is because of the flour you use. The pastry flour Andrew used, as I believe, is probably T45 type - which is a french pastry flour that is able to hold a lot of butter. So when the liquid to flour ratio is off (especially when there’s a lot of fat more than water) it’s hard to develop proper gluten network. Hence, the reason why your dough won’t be able to trap enough gas and rise properly. I would recommend adding milk half of the recipe first and gradually add it little by little. Hope this helps
For this kind of recipe you usually want the cheaper chocolat because it gets hard rather than runny when it melts. The dough got probably warm very fast because of the surface temperature of your kneeding/rolling surface.
My yeast won’t rise in warm weather either. My house is always cold in the winter and warm in the summer and my bread does great in the winter. I don’t know why. But thanks for the effort!
1: When you make enriched doughs (where you add butter and knead it in), it will rise a lot slower and a lot less. 2: If the butter is too cold when you start rolling it, the butter will fracture and you will end up with American biscuits instead of puff pastry. I would rise them no less than 90 minutes once they have been shaped. Probably going up to 2 hours or more.
Could it be the whole wheat pastry flour? I know whole wheat and other flours behave differently and whole wheat bread or all purpose flour create a denser dough typically.
That was my thought too. Babish said pastry flour, but I noticed David used whole wheat pastry flour. That definitely could be the issue. Whole wheat generally doesn’t absorb liquids as well because of the wheat germ still attached.
Hi David - Love the effort for this video! If it makes you feel any better, my croissants following this exact recipe sucked lol At least you're were aesthetically pleasing! Mine looked like underproofed dough slapped on chocolate mounds of butter hahaha Keep up the great work!
I've made "croissants" a lot over the pandemic and had few problems. I used a half-dead sough dough in a freezing midwest winter, so your yeast should work much better unless it died. make sure your water is not boiling and you're not pouring salt on top of the yeast. you could even try using salted butter and no salt in the dough. I also adjusted my dough to work for me adding flour as needed and leaving out the egg. That has always worked fine for me. Lastly, the butter melting out has happened a lot to me. Just keep the dough in the fridge before putting it in the screaming hot oven. This should cause the butter to boil in its place adding rise instead of giving it time to seep out. Good Luck! I love the nut-free content
Humidity, high salt, the over saturated butter all of these and more may have affected your dough. Personally one trick I do so you have ribbons of chocolate runing thru the croissants is to cream the butter with dark chocolate before folding into the dough. Also taking the finished product and placing them into a casserole dish pouring custard sauce aka egg milk and vanilla over top then baking makes a lovely brunch dish with mimosas btw 😏
The moisture content of your flour will change with the ambient humidity. Right now it's summer, and you live in NY, which is notorious for being muggy in the summer, so it's no surprise to me that the dough will come out wet on the straight-up measurements. It's 10x easier to add flour to a wet dough than liquid to a dry dough, so when your dough is soup, don't panic. Just add flour until it's all good.
I read a lot of comments and I have to agree, doughs can fail from the smallest change in weather or flour brand. I just had that experience 2 weeks ago while baking a recipe I've followed for the past 7 years. The weather was abnormally hot and dry, and the brand of flour I use changed its source. The recipe failed big time. I hope you try this recipe again soon. It would be a fun video trying to troubleshoot all the possible problems mentioned below.
If your dough doesn't rise then you can bloom a new batch of yeast to make sure it's alive and then make a tiny dough out of that to incorporate into the unrisen dough. That should fix that problem. For the dough not coming together I don't have a sure answer but it's probably the reason that dough changes based on the environment. Pretty sure adding a little flour is fine till it's workable.
If you add the salt in before the yeast has a chance to work, they will not rise. If you just add the yeast, milk and sugar first and let stand till foamy then you should add the rest of your ingredients! Salt tends to kill yeast
Another tip: keep the salt away from your yeast. I always follow Paul Hollywood's advice and pour them into opposite ends of the bowls. On a slow rise dough like this not rising the yeast shouldn't do anything except cause a slightly slower rise.
A few things. Try again, but with Gold or King Arthur BREAD flour only. Use water, and not milk in the dough. (Add some soft butter to the dough, but like 70-80 grams) The dough should be around 50-54% hydration. Also, check on the butter temp when rolling, because your butter was way too cold when you started laminating and rolling, hence the butter breaking into dozens of smaller pieces inside the dough.
the recipe i use is the following 500 g (wheat) flour (i use French type 55) 140g water 140 g whole milk 55 g sugar 40 g soft butter 11 g instant yeast / 32 g fresh yeast 12 g salt hope this helps ? could it also be that u might have worked the dough to much ? you want to avoid creating to much gluten in the beginning
Maybe the dough went wrong because of the humidity??? Idk man… baking is science and I’m 🥴 at science. Good work though, thanks for the video all things considered.
Honestly probably has something to do with New York weather rn. Definitely recommend retrying in winter. Humidity and heat are not very nice to baked goods
It's your flour, you definitely need a strong bread flour :) with a strong flour, the gluten you develop when mixing the dough will be able to retain the gas produced by the yeast. If you have a low gluten flour then there will be minimal development and the gas won't be retained = low rise during proof and bake. You may also see tears in your laminations because the dough's elasticity isn't good enough because of the low gluten in the flour. Hope this helps? Love your vids, keep on baking!
"Pastry flour is a low-protein flour, made from soft wheat. It contains 8-9% protein. By comparison, all-purpose contains 9-12%. That may not sound like a big difference, but less protein, means less gluten, and for bakers, that translates into baked goods that are lighter and more tender. Pastry flour is typically used to make pie crusts, cookies, pastries, biscuits and other baked goods that are leavened with baking soda or baking powder. It’s seldom used in recipes that are leavened with yeast. It just doesn’t contain enough protein to create the elasticity that yeasted baked goods require."
I tried making croissants in the past and I agree with you that they are a pain in the butt to make. They take so much time and mine didn’t turn out any better than what you can get from a decent bakery so they’ve been permanently moved to my “not worth making at home list.”
Ok so I live in the south with AC and I will tell you that even with that going full blast its still not the same as winter!!!! I don't think you need to change anything but just wait for winter!!!!!
Im wondering if maybe they didnt rise because it was too warm? You said in the video that the dough came to room temp really fast so maybe the yeast was just all tired out by the time it came for the croissants to actually rise.
Was this a bit of a car crash? Yes. That said, I think this is a pretty useful video. You are showing the result that someone who is a pretty experienced home cook putting forth their best efforts was able to attain. Ultimately, this is probably an issue with the environmental conditions or the recipe (or both).
Heya David! French viewer here No sane person would try any croissant/pain au chocolat/chocolate croissant recipe, as it's really hard You did follow everything perfectly, and the result does seem delicious still Keep on the awesome work!!
a couple of comments: 1) at 4:15 you can see the butter is not evenly distributed. I've only made puff pastry from scratch one time, so I don't claim to be an expert, but this error is very visible. it looks like you were only making your tri-folds one way and not rotating 90 degrees each rollout. 2) the pastry chef who taught me to make puff pastry said flour is weird in that if it's humid, it takes more water to hydrate the flour properly and less water when it's dryer. The complete opposite of what your expectations should be. Also, we used a combo of cake and A/P flour, so very low gluten and put the butter in the freezer to start so it was extremely cold.
Based solely off footage, Babish’s dough had more spring. His flours more than likely were higher in protein. I’d try an attempt skipping the pastry flour or just going with an AP flour.
I’d recommend rising indoors at room temp. Disregard timing and go via eyesight. If your room is a little colder, it’ll just take a little longer to rise to double. If it’s warmer, it’ll be quicker. If you rise too long it’ll overproof and deflate.
You probably needed longer rest periods in the fridge between folds. If it truly is coming to room temp too quick, the butters fat content might be too high
I actually made these (minus chocolate). I couldn’t stop my bread from rising. Even in the fridge, it kept rising! Also, my butter didn’t firm back up, even after staying in the fridge over night…
i would not have used pastry flour, it's fine if too much gluten formed in a test batch but you had far too little humidity is a b that turns any measurement into a suggestion and i think the salt or milk took out your yeast
Not sure why no one mentioned this (or at least I didnt find it), but it seems your milk was cold and it killed the yeast. You need a warm liquid with a little bit of sugar to activate the yeast, which in turn makes the dough rise.
This is the most factually inaccurate response so far. Cold killing yeast? You can literally freeze and thaw yeast back to life. It’s ok to Google search something if you’re not sure the correct answer.
I know you said you keep your house cold, but it’s summer and humid AF. The humidity killed it. You may have needed more flour but also needed to add more yeast. Be brave and try it again in the fall or spring. I love your channel and am bummed it didn’t work out. But that is the risk of that kind of pastry in the summer.
Hey David - couple of ideas. Some people say that yeast doesn’t rise well in milk; that’s why it’s often proofed in water. I noticed when you tested, you used water and it worked, but your recipe was all milk. Also, that recipe has A LOT of salt in it for the size - for comparison, The NY Times croissant recipe is nearly half again as much for most ingredients and uses almost the same amount. Also, I’ve noticed a lot of chefs shifting to Diamond kosher salt, because it’s “less salty.” They recommend cutting the salt by half when using Morton’s. Lastly, I’ve done some experimenting with yeast and Red Star has been difficult to work with. It seems more prone to failing. Fleishman’s has been a consistent winner in my family for decades. I’d compare to some other reliable croissant recipes and I think you’ll find the proportions off. I couldn’t even find Babish’s recipe on his website, so maybe that’s why? Hope this helps - love your videos, keep it up!!
I've seen lots of doughs that contain milk and they rise with no problem, I just don't know why his dough didn't rise
@@rickydona919 Yep, me too. I baked a lot of bread over the winter, and I found Red Star yeast failed on me about half the time when I used milk vs. water. So, if I use milk, I always proof first and throw a small amount of sugar in with it. Once I was able to get Fleishman’s again, I didn’t have any problems. Don’t know if it’s the yeast, the milk, or a combination of both. :)
@@rickydona919 Maybe the milk was too cold which caused the yeast to not activate. He should have heated it to 97-100 F
@@everythingbutthegirlfan762 that could've happened
@@everythingbutthegirlfan762 or it could be because of the amount of salt.. salt makes the yeast inactivate.. so that could be one reason too..
I normally makes my bread with warm milk and it always rises perfectly
Croissants are difficult on the best day, and not a feat I’d attempt in the summer. The humidity killed that dough.
I thought he said he keeps his house cold tho?
@@bbbybch5410 bread is extremely fussy about humidity, even in a house
Possibly blooming the yeast in milk.
@@CatsPajamas23 Blooming yeast in milk works really well because the yeast feeds off of the sugar.
@@elizabethbanks2074 not quite. Yeast can't produce lactase to break down milk sugars. It could even be detrimental if you used full cream/full fat milk since fat slows down fermentation.
There's a reason why the French word for bread is "pain."
Lol I never get tired of this joke 🤣
In Claire’s most recent video on her channel, she talked about having to adjust the flour and water in her dough for her bougie pigs in a blanket because of how dry it was in her basement where she stored her flour. Maybe you’re having the opposite issue? It’s too humid, so adding more flour would be ok, but also adding more of the rising agent (yeast as well?) As you increased the flour, you would probably want to keep the same volumetric ratio of yeast in your mixture.
i was thinking the exact same thing!!! love claire
Yeast is pretty flexible it might just need a bit more time
he added 180+108g of flour instead of 180+180
Edit: read through the comments and watched your measurements again. Jay is right. Babish says 180g of each type of flour but you did 180g and 108g (understandable, I almost made the same mistake when writing it down.) That would definitely contribute haha. Hard to say how your additional flour affected the percentages but I based my math on the recipe.
I’m going with salt as your culprit. I don’t know what salt Babish is using in his croissants, but in his (admittedly old) pantry essentials video he says he likes to use Diamond. His recipe doesn’t specify a gram weight but a quick google search suggests that a tablespoon of Morton’s is 15g whereas a tablespoon of Diamond is 10g due to their different crystal sizes. With those estimates, Babish’s salt was ~2.8% of the flour weight whereas yours was 4%. Most dough recipes will be 2%. Salt inhibits fermentation activity (your yeast making CO2, etc) so that high of a salt percentage could have really slowed or maybe even killed your yeast (can’t find a good source on what concentrations will kill it though.)
The other thing could just be that you didn’t get enough gluten development with the pastry flour (whole wheat won’t help you here) and very short mixing time.
Also honestly it’s not a great recipe and some of his techniques are questionable lol
Source: am pastry student
+
Tablespoon of one thing is 10g, tablespoon of other thing is 15g... That's why everyone should use metric instead that stupid american shit of a system
The first is the flour type…you don’t really have to use pastry flour and measurements of it..:use King Arthur ap. and then the salt inhibiting gluten development…also use table salt and your liquid needs to be at 70 degrees….
The Icelandic smjör strikes again. Im so happy to see it, a small percent of that comes from my cows. My Icelandic heart is now whole. Continue being awesome David!
So cool
What makes that particular brand special?
Good job cows!
I’ve never used pastry flour when making croissants, always straight bread flour, King Arthur brand specifically. Maybe the flour was the issue. I use Paul Hollywood’s recipe, and it’s never failed me.
I used to have that scale and I thought it was very inaccurate. Try another scale. As far as the rising goes, yeast will die when it comes in contact with the salt directly, so try to add the yeast to the milk while you mix all the dry ingredients, and then add the yeast-milk mixture to the dry ingredients and go from there. Hope that helps!
My best guesses as a baker are that there was too much salt in the dough and the milk wasn't warm enough, and there could have been too little sugar in the dough. Salt slows the yeast down and instant yeast needs more sugar to activate. To help you with the rolling, the dough and butter should be about the same consistency. The butter should be slightly soft and not super cold, other wise it won't roll. Hope this helps! ☺
At a cursory glance it’s likely that the issue is with the recipe and specifically protein content of differing flours. Pastry flour in the US has a protein content of 8-9 percent. Pastry flour in France (where most recipes originate) is more likely 11-14 percent. The less protein in flour the less gluten. The less gluten the less structure and the less rise. Add that to only two minutes of mixing (even with the bread flour at 11 percent protein added) is not long enough to form gluten and thus you didn’t get a rise. Thus to fix this, use only bread flour. Mix for six to eight minutes instead of two minutes. The butter problem was probably due to not enough gluten formation to give you individual layers of dough when you folded.
Edit:
Also as a rule of thumb: if a dough is still too sticky after you’ve followed the instructions, I always knead (mix) more before adding flour. Reason being is if you add more flour to firm it, you haven’t created more gluten, you’ve just given it more stability via flour. Gluten will naturally firm up your dough over time if you build enough of it
I love this. It's so refreshing to get an honest review of a recipe, instead of a video trying to convince us how "easy" it is!
David Seymour: Chocolate croissant!
Most of France: No you silly American, it's pain au chocolat!
Quebec and Southwestern France: Don't listen to those fools, it's CHOCOLATINE!
Belgium: Couque au chocolat, take it or leave it
your attempt was great and any attempt of baked goods is always appreciated- as a pastry chef yea the idea of making croissants in the summer is not good at all. humidity, temp, all played a part here. rising it is best around 20 degrees in your oven if it has a rising setting or u can basically create the environment needed yourself in it, like a stove. this is one of the most challenging doughs n keeping it in the right temp is crucial but you did a great job regardless David!!
Don't know about the dough, but remember that American and European butter have different fat percentages. Maybe that's so you should adjust for?
Its probably the flour thats at fault. The quality of bread flour vastly varies brand to brand. Theres a reason king arthur is king
I just really like all of your videos. Thank you for creating these wonderful videos
Just want to agree with everyone else saying this as a home-cook and home-baker.
Things that probably went wrong: brand of flour used (different brands can have tremendous different amount of gluten, proteins, and other contents), humidity (affects the amount of flour that needs to be used in the first place), potentially TOO warm of a spot for rising the dough, though not sure about that one.
Yes- the flour part! American have sooo many variations of flour. When all you need is regular fine ground flour. It might not be just the brand, it might be the type of flour.
I agree, this is likely the main issue with what happened. Good recipes with flours should tell you the flour characteristics (just the protein content can make or break the entire recipe), plus the same recipe in January would probably not work in July due to heat and humidity differences. That's something professional bakers know and always take into account, but it takes a lot of experience in knowing how to alter a baking recipe...
Definitely agree with the brand of flour and humidity being the main issues. I tried making Claire's focaccia bread recipe from her first cookbook and I had to add so much flour to it. After watching her RUclips video about that bread, I believe she mentioned how she had really low humidity where she was testing the recipe. Didn't realize how big a factor humidity was when making bread. I noticed that you used whole wheat flour; it absorbs liquid differently than an all purpose bread flour blend.
Cooking, especially baking stresses me out so much so props to you for attempting this difficult recipe
It helps to activate the instant yeast in your Milk with the sugar until the foam almost overflow for the container at à température around 45' celsius.
( it reduces the amount liquide à little bit also )
For the layering, keep butter room temp. Roll it between two wax paper, to max 1 cm thick when you get the shape you want you let it rest in the frige until it is hard again, butter shape in à square of 2 thirds of your rectangle of dough. You place the butter on the upper 2 thirds of the dough, so you fold the last third of the rectangle over the butter to the half, then fold the other, so you start your folding process with alreay even layers.
Love your content! Keep on cooking!
I don’t know about the yeast, but I want to say how beautiful your work looked throughout the video. Everything looked so precise and well done. It’s a bummer they didn’t turn out.
Oh david, making croissants is SUPER HARD! Do not be so hard on yourself!! seriously. you always kill it but these are UNDERSTANDABLY super challenging.
I wonder if the butter was too warm in the initial dough? I haven't seen this particular recipe but it looked quite greasy and when I've made croissants I add cold butter to the detremp and let it get worked. I also add the butter after working the dough a bit so that some gluten can form before the fat starts interfering. I've also had to proof my final shaped croissants/pains aux chocolats for up to 3/4 hours in my frigid apartment before they are ready to be baked, which helps the layers separate before baking. It also looked like your butter block was maybe too cold compared to your dough when you were laminating, and the butter block wasn't extending all the way to the edges which could gum up some of your layers. It's important that the butter extends with the dough and you should be able to see it spreading all the way out under the surface
I'm doing a baking course and we did the argentinean version of Croissants. We used very cold butter as well as letting the dough chill in the fridge several times, so maybe that could be a reason
I’m surprised the recipe called for pastry flour; I’ve made croissants before and the recipes have always called for bread flour.. I would try a French Pastry chef’s croissant recipe if you would like to give it another go.. or Claire Saffitz’s recipe
Babish's recipe calls for both bread and pastry flour. I think that is where he went wrong. Pastry flour alone doesn't have enough protein to create good gluten to allow the yeast to work.
I’ve had the same wetness issue with that specific 365 bread flour.
Alex did a really good series of episodes on croissants
Are you sure you were supposed to use whole wheat pastry flour? Whole wheat flour usually acts a lot different than regular.
That was my thought as well.
Several issues with the recipe:
1. Hydration for laminated dough is ideally around 50+-4% while this recipe is 66% hydration.
2. A Blend of bread flour along with AP is preferred to assist with crumb structure.
3. Milk inhibits the formation of Gluten, which is why pastry flour in this particular circumstance would never be advised.
4. Substantially easier to hydrate flour with predominantly water as opposed to milk.
5. Butter blocks are nearly always 50% of the weight of flour; however, Babish's recipe is nearly 63%.
The recipe needs substantial revision to yield a good outcome; therefore, it is the recipe, not you!
Very interesting, it's always nice when someone knows what they're talking about and can say exactly what went wrong.
David should have at least been able to get the results that binging with babish was getting though 🤔
Yes. I was thinking along the same lines as you. Ive been taking croissants for about 10 years now, and ive never used milk in any of my recipes. A couple times i used milk powder, but it was like 8-10 grams for a 12 crox batch. My dough is always 52% because that's what works for me in my kitchen/home. I use almost 100% bread flour simply for the higher protein that 14% region. It also looked like he was rolling the dough with the butter being way too cold, which led to it breaking apart.
i live in the philippines where its always humid af. i followed joshua weissmans recipe for croissants to a T and it was beautiful. maybe try that? ive made it several times and they always come put beautifully
I've made it several times in different seasons as well, and they were always perfect
Ive made them 2 times. There were pretty good
David forgot the most important part of baking a successful and perfect croissant- *praying to an ancient deity and sacrificing the family member you love most*
I wonder if there's an issue with the humidity and your flour? Since pan au chocolat (and any croissant dough) has a lean dough that has butter laminated into it, the proportions of temperature and humidity in the flour make a significant difference to the texture, workability, and ratios used in the recipe. This is especially true if youre using a different flour than they are, which is most likely the case, even if they're based in NY. Also, my suspicion is when you put it outside, the dough in the metal bowl and the heal may have gotten too hot and killed the yeast, although I'm not sure if that's the case.
Who even knows with this sort of baking though-as an amateur baker myself, I hate making laminated doughs because they're messy, time intensive, and almost never work out when I do them either. These are just a couple of things I've learned over the years that may at least explain some of your heartache, even if only a little. Hope it can be of use!
I was thinking the same thing i live out in az and i have a spray bottle full of water that i use when i bake. The air is just so dry
He's using whole wheat pastry flour
You tried, David, and we appreciate the effort!
I think the reason it didn’t rise well is because of the flour you use. The pastry flour Andrew used, as I believe, is probably T45 type - which is a french pastry flour that is able to hold a lot of butter. So when the liquid to flour ratio is off (especially when there’s a lot of fat more than water) it’s hard to develop proper gluten network. Hence, the reason why your dough won’t be able to trap enough gas and rise properly. I would recommend adding milk half of the recipe first and gradually add it little by little. Hope this helps
For this kind of recipe you usually want the cheaper chocolat because it gets hard rather than runny when it melts.
The dough got probably warm very fast because of the surface temperature of your kneeding/rolling surface.
My yeast won’t rise in warm weather either. My house is always cold in the winter and warm in the summer and my bread does great in the winter. I don’t know why. But thanks for the effort!
1: When you make enriched doughs (where you add butter and knead it in), it will rise a lot slower and a lot less.
2: If the butter is too cold when you start rolling it, the butter will fracture and you will end up with American biscuits instead of puff pastry. I would rise them no less than 90 minutes once they have been shaped. Probably going up to 2 hours or more.
Could it be the whole wheat pastry flour? I know whole wheat and other flours behave differently and whole wheat bread or all purpose flour create a denser dough typically.
That was my thought too. Babish said pastry flour, but I noticed David used whole wheat pastry flour. That definitely could be the issue. Whole wheat generally doesn’t absorb liquids as well because of the wheat germ still attached.
“Softer then the average RUclipsr’s ego when you make a joke about them” 👍😂👍😂👍👍👍😂👍
Hi David - Love the effort for this video! If it makes you feel any better, my croissants following this exact recipe sucked lol At least you're were aesthetically pleasing! Mine looked like underproofed dough slapped on chocolate mounds of butter hahaha
Keep up the great work!
Need another corrected croissant video soon 🥐 All the love and support to you man 🙌🙌
Bread flour, less salt, colder rolling (no melted butter between layers allowed) start yeast in water with some sugar.
I've made "croissants" a lot over the pandemic and had few problems. I used a half-dead sough dough in a freezing midwest winter, so your yeast should work much better unless it died.
make sure your water is not boiling and you're not pouring salt on top of the yeast. you could even try using salted butter and no salt in the dough.
I also adjusted my dough to work for me adding flour as needed and leaving out the egg. That has always worked fine for me.
Lastly, the butter melting out has happened a lot to me. Just keep the dough in the fridge before putting it in the screaming hot oven. This should cause the butter to boil in its place adding rise instead of giving it time to seep out.
Good Luck!
I love the nut-free content
Hi David, did you happen to check if the scale was in grams or if you didn't forget to take the weight off the bowls you used?
That crunch sounded great!
I think pastry flour (which Babish using) and whole wheat pastry flour are two different things. This strikes me as an important factor.
I cannot stop laughing - you are such a good sport! HAHAHAHA
Humidity, high salt, the over saturated butter all of these and more may have affected your dough. Personally one trick I do so you have ribbons of chocolate runing thru the croissants is to cream the butter with dark chocolate before folding into the dough. Also taking the finished product and placing them into a casserole dish pouring custard sauce aka egg milk and vanilla over top then baking makes a lovely brunch dish with mimosas btw 😏
The moisture content of your flour will change with the ambient humidity. Right now it's summer, and you live in NY, which is notorious for being muggy in the summer, so it's no surprise to me that the dough will come out wet on the straight-up measurements. It's 10x easier to add flour to a wet dough than liquid to a dry dough, so when your dough is soup, don't panic. Just add flour until it's all good.
David please don’t hold back on dissing these RUclipsrs that need to be called out it’s part of what I look forward to in these vids🙏😭
The baby face in the flashback shows just how far you've come as much as the skill you've gained
Usually it's easier to incubate in low temp but longer time, mb the yeast overheated
If you added additional flour, did you additional yeast? Perhaps ration of flour to yeast is off when extra flour is added
I read a lot of comments and I have to agree, doughs can fail from the smallest change in weather or flour brand.
I just had that experience 2 weeks ago while baking a recipe I've followed for the past 7 years. The weather was abnormally hot and dry, and the brand of flour I use changed its source. The recipe failed big time.
I hope you try this recipe again soon. It would be a fun video trying to troubleshoot all the possible problems mentioned below.
If your dough doesn't rise then you can bloom a new batch of yeast to make sure it's alive and then make a tiny dough out of that to incorporate into the unrisen dough. That should fix that problem. For the dough not coming together I don't have a sure answer but it's probably the reason that dough changes based on the environment. Pretty sure adding a little flour is fine till it's workable.
You are fantastic. I love your honesty.
If you add the salt in before the yeast has a chance to work, they will not rise. If you just add the yeast, milk and sugar first and let stand till foamy then you should add the rest of your ingredients! Salt tends to kill yeast
Another tip: keep the salt away from your yeast. I always follow Paul Hollywood's advice and pour them into opposite ends of the bowls. On a slow rise dough like this not rising the yeast shouldn't do anything except cause a slightly slower rise.
This is why I stick to canned croissants 😅
Canned croissants also come with the fun experience of seeing the dough violently free itself from the can
A few things. Try again, but with Gold or King Arthur BREAD flour only. Use water, and not milk in the dough. (Add some soft butter to the dough, but like 70-80 grams) The dough should be around 50-54% hydration. Also, check on the butter temp when rolling, because your butter was way too cold when you started laminating and rolling, hence the butter breaking into dozens of smaller pieces inside the dough.
Just a little tip from a former baker - turn up the temp in the oven to prevent the fat from pouring out onto the pan.
the recipe i use is the following
500 g (wheat) flour (i use French type 55)
140g water
140 g whole milk
55 g sugar
40 g soft butter
11 g instant yeast / 32 g fresh yeast
12 g salt
hope this helps ?
could it also be that u might have worked the dough to much ?
you want to avoid creating to much gluten in the beginning
Maybe the dough went wrong because of the humidity??? Idk man… baking is science and I’m 🥴 at science. Good work though, thanks for the video all things considered.
Honestly probably has something to do with New York weather rn. Definitely recommend retrying in winter. Humidity and heat are not very nice to baked goods
try using the King Arthur flour recipe. it has always worked for me.
It's your flour, you definitely need a strong bread flour :) with a strong flour, the gluten you develop when mixing the dough will be able to retain the gas produced by the yeast. If you have a low gluten flour then there will be minimal development and the gas won't be retained = low rise during proof and bake. You may also see tears in your laminations because the dough's elasticity isn't good enough because of the low gluten in the flour. Hope this helps? Love your vids, keep on baking!
I still wanna see a "I tested everyone's spicy chicken sandwich" but still always good to see you pop up in my youtube 👍🏼
"Pastry flour is a low-protein flour, made from soft wheat. It contains 8-9% protein. By comparison, all-purpose contains 9-12%. That may not sound like a big difference, but less protein, means less gluten, and for bakers, that translates into baked goods that are lighter and more tender. Pastry flour is typically used to make pie crusts, cookies, pastries, biscuits and other baked goods that are leavened with baking soda or baking powder. It’s seldom used in recipes that are leavened with yeast. It just doesn’t contain enough protein to create the elasticity that yeasted baked goods require."
I tried making croissants in the past and I agree with you that they are a pain in the butt to make. They take so much time and mine didn’t turn out any better than what you can get from a decent bakery so they’ve been permanently moved to my “not worth making at home list.”
you should try claire's croissant recipe, i tried it a few months ago and they came almost perfect on my first try
Ok so I live in the south with AC and I will tell you that even with that going full blast its still not the same as winter!!!! I don't think you need to change anything but just wait for winter!!!!!
Not sure what went wrong but I’d love to see you try the making the viral Lafayette croissants
Im wondering if maybe they didnt rise because it was too warm? You said in the video that the dough came to room temp really fast so maybe the yeast was just all tired out by the time it came for the croissants to actually rise.
Was this a bit of a car crash? Yes.
That said, I think this is a pretty useful video. You are showing the result that someone who is a pretty experienced home cook putting forth their best efforts was able to attain. Ultimately, this is probably an issue with the environmental conditions or the recipe (or both).
always a banger
You invented the Kouing amann croissant and chocolate breads ! XD You should look at what "Alex the french guy cooking" did.
You are looking good David. Thank You for the video.
Heya David!
French viewer here
No sane person would try any croissant/pain au chocolat/chocolate croissant recipe, as it's really hard
You did follow everything perfectly, and the result does seem delicious still
Keep on the awesome work!!
The Dark Souls of baking
a couple of comments: 1) at 4:15 you can see the butter is not evenly distributed. I've only made puff pastry from scratch one time, so I don't claim to be an expert, but this error is very visible. it looks like you were only making your tri-folds one way and not rotating 90 degrees each rollout. 2) the pastry chef who taught me to make puff pastry said flour is weird in that if it's humid, it takes more water to hydrate the flour properly and less water when it's dryer. The complete opposite of what your expectations should be. Also, we used a combo of cake and A/P flour, so very low gluten and put the butter in the freezer to start so it was extremely cold.
Based solely off footage, Babish’s dough had more spring. His flours more than likely were higher in protein. I’d try an attempt skipping the pastry flour or just going with an AP flour.
I’d recommend rising indoors at room temp. Disregard timing and go via eyesight. If your room is a little colder, it’ll just take a little longer to rise to double. If it’s warmer, it’ll be quicker. If you rise too long it’ll overproof and deflate.
You probably needed longer rest periods in the fridge between folds. If it truly is coming to room temp too quick, the butters fat content might be too high
One of the most difficult recipies to tackles ... Kudos for trying David
3:54 like the heart of Rachel Ray. 😆
They look like the kinds my dad made for my birthday once
I feel like this video was over before I could blink
Whole wheat pastry flour?
Shiiit I ain’t never been this fucking early, 6 minutes!
Welcome satans girl
They look perfect to me 💗
DAVID YOURE SO FUCKING LOVEABLE
Love you and your channel
they look great, have fun and keep going.
I actually made these (minus chocolate). I couldn’t stop my bread from rising. Even in the fridge, it kept rising! Also, my butter didn’t firm back up, even after staying in the fridge over night…
Adding that extra flour did you in it looks super sticky but if you give it time it’ll settle down
i would not have used pastry flour, it's fine if too much gluten formed in a test batch but you had far too little
humidity is a b that turns any measurement into a suggestion and i think the salt or milk took out your yeast
Use 100 percent pastry flour. Bread Flour is too heavy milled from hard wheat.
Not sure why no one mentioned this (or at least I didnt find it), but it seems your milk was cold and it killed the yeast.
You need a warm liquid with a little bit of sugar to activate the yeast, which in turn makes the dough rise.
This is the most factually inaccurate response so far. Cold killing yeast? You can literally freeze and thaw yeast back to life. It’s ok to Google search something if you’re not sure the correct answer.
I know you said you keep your house cold, but it’s summer and humid AF. The humidity killed it. You may have needed more flour but also needed to add more yeast. Be brave and try it again in the fall or spring. I love your channel and am bummed it didn’t work out. But that is the risk of that kind of pastry in the summer.
i made chef john's recipe for these a couple times and it always came out fire
Brian Lagerstrom has the best Croissant recipe/technique.
You need some of that magic New York city water apparently. New York state water just won't cut it.
ayoooo como un bebé as background music 🔥
I agree with others that the use of whole wheat flour is questionable. Whole wheat hulls screw up rising.