Wholemeal croissant

This is gonna be a busy week for me. I have some friends with babies visiting from KL. I’ll be bringing them around Sandakan, checking out the orang utans, proboscis monkey (my son would love seeing them, he calls them ma-rao), crocodile and bears. Lucky that we have quite a lot of these in Sandakan. I’m sure both my son and I will have an excited week ahead.

The gang will be arriving late afternoon today and tomorrow. Thinking of making something for their tea later on today. Should I make them some nice, buttery, flaky croissants? But I haven’t made them for years. And the last attempt didn’t turn out perfect. Or should I just make them some of my usual cupcakes or buns? Me, knowing myself, I would definitely challenge myself in making the croissants. Who am I, if I’m not up for a simple challenge?

Tada!! The wholemeal croissants turned out ‘perfect’ .. or not so. I rated them 7 out of 10. They still don’t look that ‘perfectly’ pretty. But since they are ‘home-made’, I’m sure I’ll be pardoned. Taste and texture wise, GREAT!! Lovely buttery aroma lingers on even hours after they are baked. The thing I love about this recipe, it’s not that tedious compared to the usual croissant recipe, yet still turn out tasting awesome (it only took me about 3hours from start till finish)! That’s why I’ve been trying out quite a lot of recipe from Vic’s blog. So far, most of the recipes I’ve tried out from her blog turned out good. I’ve made some modifications to mine by replacing some of the plain white bread flour with wholemeal flour, so I don’t feel that gush of guilt eating these buttery morsels. Instead of pastry margarine as recommended by the recipe, I still insist that I use real butter. If you’ve been following me or my blog, you know that I’ve banned all sorts of trans-fat ingredients or food. But I knew that croissants with butter would be much harder to work with if compared to that using pastry margarine, due to the weather here. I would just have to give my best.

They said no one make perfect croissant on their first attempt. It needs lots of practice, patience and dedication. I’m only afraid that by the time I get there making the best croissant ever, my waistline would get super out-of-shape. Anyway, no one talks about ‘waistline’ when comes to good food. My favorite quirky filling for my wholemeal croissant is peanut butter and sliced banana (.. don’t give me that rolling eyes). What’s yours?

Recipe adapted from Victoria Bakes, further adapted from Alex Goh’s The World of Bread

• 45g butter, softened (I used grapeseed oil)
• 180ml cold water
• 1tbsp soy milk powder
• 1tsp salt
• 2tbsp brown sugar
• 150g bread flour
• 60g wholemeal flour
• 90g all purpose flour
• 2tsp instant active dry yeast

• 120g unsalted butter, left in freezer for 30min

Instructions

1. Grate frozen butter with a cheese grater onto a piece of cling film and form into a square block, measuring about 15cmx15cm. Chill in refrigerator.
2. Prepare dough by kneading all ingredients. I kneaded the dough using my Donlim breadmaker for 20minutes. All the ingredients are added in based on the order they are listed above.
3. Roll dough out into a square, measuring about 30cmx30cm, wrap with cling film, and chill for 1 hour.
4. Remove dough and butter block from frige. Place butter block in the middle of dough, and pull 4 corners of dough together to wrap the butter in the middle, seal the seams.
5. Gently flatten the dough with my palm, using the rolling pin, roll dough out into a long rectangle till it is 1cm in thickness. Fold out in thirds like an envelope, turn dough 90 degree, and repeat the same process once more.
6. Wrap dough with cling film and chill for 30 minutes.
7. Remove chilled dough. Dust the tabletop with bread flour. Repeat the above process (Step 5) once more and chill dough for another 30 minutes.
8. Remove dough from fridge, and roll it out to 5mm thickness (mine was about 10mm thickness, I couldn’t roll it any thinner or the butter would be oozing out), cut triangles (with base width measuring about 5cm and length measuring about 5-7cm), roll and shape into croissant.
9. Prove croissants in oven for an hour.
10. 15 minutes before the hour, remove croissants from the oven. Preheat oven to 170degC (for my Khind oven), brush with egg wash and sprinkle with topping (optional).
11. Bake for about 18-20 minutes or until croissants turn golden brown.

*I made 13 croissants using this recipe



This post is linked to the event Little Thumbs Up (June 2014 Event: Butter) organised by Zoe (Bake for Happy Kids) and Mui Mui (My Little Favourite DIY) and hosted by Jozelyn Ng (Spice Up My Kitchen)" 

I am also submitting this post to "My Treasured Recipes #1 - Alex Goh (June/July 2014)" hosted by Miss B of Everybody Eats Well in Flanders and co-hosted by Charmaine of Mimi Bakery House.