I have plenty of preciseness in my chosen profession. I am very precise when tying flies or when building furniture. I cook when I need to stop thinking. Cooking should not be about preciseness. It should be about smells and tastes and textures and adventure and daring. Most of my favorite dishes I know by heart and have made my own. A little more cayenne pepper here, a dash of turmeric there. The recipe is merely a starting point from which you can throw yourself headfirst off the cliff.
Not that all my cooking adventures have ended well. There is the infamous case of "The Purple Chicken". Usually, however, it works out famously rather than infamously.
Baking is an entirely different matter. Crusty French breads, rich challah and babka, flaky croissants - I adore them all. I have been more than willing to pay a little more for the masters of flour and egg to make these heavenly creations for me so that I am not crushed by the failures coming out of my oven that I dare not call 'homemade bread' This winter though, I have some time on my hands. I have decided to learn to bake.
It is not going well. Today there were "The Croissants."
"The Croissants" actually had their start this weekend. The detrempe has to sit in the refrigerator for 24-48 hours immediately after it is made. Apparently it needs a time out. Detrempe is a fancy French term that I think means sticky water yeast butter flour goo. One would normally cover the sticky ball of dough that one shoves in the back of the fridge. However, the book I'm using does not mention this step. I was committed to actually following the recipe this time. I didn't cover it.
I should have covered it.
Two days after I made the detrempe and had almost forgotten it existed, I pulled it out. There was a thin hard dough-exposed-to-cold-air crust on the top. Yuck. I took a sharp knife, had DH hold the bowl, and sliced off the grossness. Underneath it was golden, yeasty, yummy-smelling dough. It was ready for the butter.
Step 15 in this process is to make a butter block. Croissants take a lot of butter. No, I mean a lot. Three sticks. Fourteen croissants. You figure it out. I used my lovely cherry rolling pin (thanks Grandma!) and a scalpel to roll out and square up my butter block. I don't have a pastry knife people. I have a scalpel. This is how my kitchen works.
Then you take the detrempe and plop the butter block on half, fold it, let it rest, roll it out, fold it, let it rest, roll it out, fold it...you get the point. You do this until you have 81 layers of thin, buttery, doughy goodness. At this point, I'm supposed to roll it out v..e...r...y...c..a..r..e..f..u..l..l..y so the layers don't tear, cut triangles, and magically shape them into croissants. Mine weren't quite croissant shaped. They were more straight line than C-shaped. But they were done.
After all of this, you let the croissants "proof" for 2-3 hours. This has something to do with proving that you haven't killed the yeast. Not a problem in my kitchen. The yeast in that little red jar know they better pull their weight or it's off to the compost pile for them. I met DH for lunch while the little yeast soldiers did their work. The soldiers got a little overzealous.
When I came back, the croissants had not doubled in size. They had tripled. The croissants were all scrunched together in one tiny little pan trying to elbow each other out for more real estate. I did what any baker would do. I stuck them in the oven. I had low hopes for these guys, but I refused to waste all that butter. We were going to eat them. DH ate that purple chicken. He would choke these down too because he loves me. Forty minutes later, I had enormous golden croissants.
They were amazing.
Holy smokes, were they amazing. It was like eating buttered air. Warm, flaky, close-your-eyes-they-were-so-good buttered air.
I can't wait to see what they taste like when I get them right.
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