Croissants

At last! They're here! I've been prepping these for two days now. And they are a vision :) despite being cut a little small, and a smidge overdone, I am very pleased with these - the flavour is delicate, not overpowering or too rich.

I proved the dough in the fridge for 2 days. It was supposed to only be overnight, but events kept me away from the dough. And today - college was closed as their water pipes have burst :S and flooded, so I had some time to devote to these.

The dough looked on the boundary of being overproved, but turned out good.
I found it difficult to get the dough thin enough, it was very springy and kept springing back into itself. Need to find a way of managing it better. Must make it do what I want, not what it wants.

The process is really fun. You make a dough, and leave it to prove very slowly, so the flavour is good.
Then laminate the dough with cold butter - basically making a flaky pastry with dough as the base. I never realised this was what croissants were before :)
Handling the dough was a joy - it felt light and smelled great. Then i cut it and shaped it, went for a run while it proved, then baked it off. Bit of a trial in my very onesided oven, and slightly overdone because i made them a bit small but kept the cooking time the same.
All in all - it was a full time job:
 - first prove for the dough - overnight
 - laminating - rolling, resting (30 mins), x3
 - cutting shaping
 - proving - 2 hours
 - bake - 18 mins :)
But worth it.