- 6 weeks ago
World-famous pastry chef Dominique Ansel (creator of the Cronut) joins Bon Appétit to demonstrate how to make the perfect croissant at his NYC bakery. Learn every step, from mixing and fermenting the dough to laminating with French butter, shaping, proofing, and baking for that signature flaky, golden crust and moist honeycomb interior.
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00:00I'm Dominic Ancel, pastry chef and owner of Dominic Ancel Bakery and today I'm going to
00:07show you my perfect croissant. Here in New York City we have three bakeries and we also have two
00:14bakeries in Las Vegas, Cisans Palace and the Paris Hortel. I eat the croissant like you're
00:19tasting wine. You're gonna see this golden beautiful crust, all these layers that are
00:24slightly separating on the side. It has to be moist, it has to be still tender in the center
00:28with a nice crunchy flake on the outside. I look at the cross section which we call the honeycomb.
00:34The honeycomb should be this little air pocket within the layers of the croissant which tells you
00:40that the croissant is beautifully made. The very first thing we do for making a croissant is mixing the dough.
00:49If you are making croissant at home, a few tips and tools that you need, I think for sure using
00:55digital scales, I measure everything in metrics because it's a lot more precise. Digital thermometer
01:00as well is very important. We want to try to keep things as cold as possible as the mixing process,
01:06the friction will add, revise the temperature within the dough. The flour is probably one of the most
01:12important ingredients in our croissant. This is a flour from France, from Les Grands Moulins de Paris,
01:18a flour maker in France. The quality of the wheat, the quality of the soil, this is one of the most crucial
01:23ingredients into making the croissant because you get something that is the quality and the
01:28specificity of making a croissant that will hold the gluten, that will absorb the water properly
01:34and give you like a very specific and unique texture that you cannot get with any other flour.
01:40The lemon that we use, it's for both flavor and fermentation. It helps with the characteristic of
01:45the taste of the croissant, makes it like very unique and special. The deep easty flavor and it's also
01:52a lemon agent so it helps like making the croissant puffy and light. This is a mixer that's designed
01:58for dough specifically so that only the bowl and the hood are moving. We're gonna put all our dry
02:04ingredients within the mixer. Then we're gonna add all of them, add the honey. It's to give it some food
02:11but also for the flavors and texture. Without the honey, the texture of the dough is different. Then we're
02:16gonna add our butter here. We use easy Saint-Mere butter, high quality ingredients and that makes a huge
02:22difference within the quality of the croissant you get. Then we're gonna add the milk and the extra
02:28protein makes the croissant just a little bit richer. Eggs. Here we have our yeast that's been dissolved with
02:35room temperature water. We're gonna add this to the side here. We add the water at the end. We're gonna close the
02:41gate. We're gonna start mixing. The motion and the friction of the hook within the dough is gonna
02:49make everything warmer. So the longer you mix, the warmer it's gonna get. Our sweet spot here is between
02:5422 and 24. It cannot be above 30 degrees. You will start killing the fermentation, killing the levain
03:00and the yeast. Making dough in a small stand mixer is not ideal even with a hook because you have a lot of
03:06friction. Oftentimes that is too hot and not elastic enough. What I find like using this type of mixer
03:12that is designed for dough, it makes the dough more combined, mix faster with more elasticity without
03:19overheating the dough. The snap should be strong, should be like a lot of resistance. Right now I can grab it
03:24and pull it easily. So I'm gonna mix for another minute. We use the same lever, the same recipe, the same
03:30ingredients every single day. There's so many variables that makes it too tricky to give too many details on
03:35what we're looking for. Winter, it will change. The summer will change depending on the flower.
03:44The difference is like already like much, much bigger. So I can feel just after like a minute of
03:49mixing, the dough is a lot more elasticity. But we're gonna stretch it very, very thin in center to see
03:55how much elasticity we have here. You should be able to do this to the dough and for the dough to bounce
04:00back without breaking. You can see like thin like paper right now. And we're activating the fermentation
04:05between 22 and 24 Celsius. That's the sweet spot. Still got it. If we get the dough after mixing
04:12between 22 and 24, we're activating that fermentation. So the dough is going to start like puffing up and
04:18rising. If for some reason it's a little too cold, you can mix a little bit more. If it's too hot,
04:22unfortunately there's nothing you can do. You have to start the whole process again. So always better
04:26to have a dough that's a little bit too cold. The bulk fermentation is happening now. What we're looking for
04:31is the dough that's going to double the size. That's going to be a good indication of the
04:35fermentation as started.
04:41Now we're going to shape the dough. So what I like to do here, two hands. We're going to give
04:46a nice ball shape. We're going to keep it nice and tight. You can see just after a few minutes sitting on
04:54the counter, the texture changes already. The dough is already like changing, evolving. So all the flour,
05:02all the gluten content is going to absorb the moisture within the dough. And it's going to feel
05:07very stretchy, very bouncy. What I like to do is to cut the dough on top here. You do a cross right in the
05:13middle. I'm pre-defining the shape of the dough. I want something square and rectangle to incorporate the
05:18butter. And I'm going to put this on a sheet tray with a plastic cover. It will just wrap it up.
05:24We're going to leave a little bit of room. Now we're just going to wait. The dough has been sitting
05:28out for about two hours. As you see, like it's light and puffy right now. So with the plastic on top,
05:34I'm just going to press the dough down to really remove all that gas, all these bubbles, so you can
05:41feel the gas getting chased out of the dough. If you don't do this, what's going to happen is that the
05:46dough is going to over-ferment. All that fermentation that you need before the baking eventually
05:52turns sour. You're not going to have the result you're looking for. The volume is not going to be
05:56there and the flavor is going to be different. I just finished the first degas. I'm going to put
06:00this in the fridge for one hour. I'm going to do the second degas and then we're going to start the
06:03lavitation.
06:08The lavitation process is very important as we're going to give all the layers to the croissant.
06:12Here are my butter that's squared out and the particularity of this butter, which is one of
06:17the most important thing, is that this butter is like French butter. It is very, very, very,
06:23very flexible. As you can see, you can bend it and it won't break. So this butter has very low water
06:29content and butter is going to give all that texture, beautiful texture of the croissant. If it's too cold,
06:34you won't be able to bend it. You want cold but very flexible and you want to have your dough as cold as
06:39possible because we're going to give the fold and as we're doing this, the dough is going to get warmer
06:44and warmer. I'm going to have to work a little bit fast here. We're going to place our butter about
06:50halfway through the dough. So I'm going to cut my dough in half right here. You want everything to
06:55match up and pile up as perfectly as possible. I'm going to flip my dough, bring the dough to the edge of
07:01the butter. And you see, I put this on parchment paper so it doesn't stick. We're starting doing
07:06the first fold. It's going to give us that light, puffy texture. For this, I use a rolling pin.
07:13The layers within the croissant is one of the most important parts of making a beautiful croissant.
07:17It has to be flaky. It has to be separated. It cannot be too buttery. It cannot be too dry either.
07:23It's going to take a little bit of time, but we're going to roll this very gently,
07:26as delicately as possible. So even for home, this will be a large batch. I flip it because
07:32I want to make sure that I evenly put pressure on the butter and the dough. I'm trying to make
07:39sure I keep that layer of butter sandwiched between the dough and as consistent as possible.
07:47If it gets too warm, we should definitely put this in the fridge. It takes a little bit of time,
07:51it takes a little bit of strength to roll that dough. You don't have to make that big of a batch either,
07:55but I want to show you the process of making it by hand, which is not the easiest and not ideal
08:02either, but which is still possible to do at home. There's many different ways of doing this. People
08:08can wrap the dough around the butter and push it in, do like a packet. I like to do it this way because
08:14the butter goes as close as possible to the edge and you don't have an excess of dough on the side.
08:19I usually work my dough around zero to four degrees Celsius and I work the butter around 18.
08:28We're going to fold the dough one third of the way like this and over here. You can see we started
08:35with two pieces of dough, one piece of butter and now we're like multiplying the layers. So there's
08:39like three layers here, plus three, plus three, there's nine layers. We're going to sheet it for about an hour
08:45and then we'll give another fold. Here's the dough we just folded. You see it's a little puffy,
08:50a little bit more round, a little like less even. And this is the dough that went through the sheeter
08:57with a single fold and double fold. A dough sheeter is a machine that has two cylinders
09:02where we can adjust the height of the cylinder. So essentially you pass your dough through it
09:06and that makes it like thinner and thinner and you can automate it and you can do this very quickly
09:11and have a very consistent result. Here we've given our single fold double fold. The dough has chilled
09:16for another hour and now we're going to process the final sheeting. So we're going to go to four
09:20millimeters which is the thickness of our croissant. We're going to make it wide enough so we can fold it in
09:26half and actually cut those triangles. So just a light dust of flour right here. The machine is programmed so
09:33it will know like which thickness to go so as you see as the cylinders are going down the dough is
09:39going to get thinner and thinner. You can have too many layers in the case like you stretching the
09:44dough way too much and you'll have a dough that will like tear apart a little bit. You can have two
09:49little layers if you don't give the right folds. It won't be as light and as puffy. If your dough is
09:56tearing at this point there's nothing else you can do. You have to start the process from the beginning. There's no way to save it.
10:03Once our dough is off the shearer what we do for us is to relax the dough. We stretch it so much one
10:11way. We want to make sure it doesn't retract so we're going to relax the dough by just pulling the sides
10:16like this. We have a lot of layers here. A single fold and another double fold so we're like probably
10:24thousands of layers right here. So once I have relaxed my dough here I'm just going to fold it in half.
10:28It exerts light pressure on the dough just to mark the middle and we're going to cut it with a sharp
10:37blade. I'm going to cut it right here. This is called a bicycle just to mark out the dough. So I'm
10:43going to push it to nine centimeters, nine and a half. You will see thousands of different ways of making
10:48croissants, different sizes. I like mine to be like nine and a half by 26, 27 and then we'll go all the way down.
10:55We'll mark it on the bottom as well. So now I'm going to take my blade and my ruler. I'm going to cut
11:01through to make my triangles. I use a razor blade because it doesn't press and crush the layers.
11:07You really like cuts them through. What I want you to see here is all these layers, hundreds and hundreds
11:13of layers of butter and dough. They are overlapping each other and you can see the dough and the butter are
11:19like distinct lines and that's what makes like a beautiful croissant. It's because all those lines
11:25so they like make those layers and make this very light texture. You want to do this as quick as
11:30possible while it's on the counter so the dough doesn't get too soft. It's important to like rest
11:35at this stage because we've stretched the dough so much and we want the dough to relax a little bit
11:39before we give the final shaping so we don't lose that definition of the croissant. So we're done with
11:45cutting croissant now we're going to put them in the fridge for about an hour to rest. Just cut our
11:50croissant and the fun part I would say the part that everyone loves is rolling the croissant. For this
11:56we just push at the top of the croissant and we roll it down straight to make sure it's symmetrical and
12:03I push it down slightly. Remember we sheet those croissants to four millimeters and we see those layers.
12:10We can really see the definition of the butter and the dough still and this will appear when we actually
12:17bake those croissants. I like to leave the tip of my croissant just tucked slightly under and not too far
12:24in so you want something as puffy, as light, as aerated as possible. If the tail of the croissant is
12:30tucked in it's going to keep everything tight and prevent it from developing. Once we shape our croissant,
12:36two things that are important here. I slightly press it down so to prevent from the dough to rolling
12:42as it's like poofing and baking and also leave enough space within the croissant. The volume is
12:48going to double to triple so you want to make sure there's space in between so they don't touch each other
12:53and also to make sure that the air circulates while baking throughout the tray in between the croissant
13:00so you have a nice development of the croissant. So those are ready and ready to go in the
13:09poofler. They're rolled. We are 28 degrees celsius with 80 to 85 percent humidity. So very important
13:16is when we really push the fermentation. If you go over 28 celsius you might take the risk of melting the
13:22butter so you don't want to be too hot and that humidity inside the poofler is very important to help
13:27keeping the dough moist so it doesn't dry out and helping develop as well without too much heat.
13:32This is our poofler. It's just a box with some heat and humidity. They're going to be in here for
13:39about two hours. Now the yeast is really going to get to work, start activating within the croissant
13:45and puff up our croissant. These have been poofing for about an hour and a half. They're ready to bake.
13:50So the test, the jiggle. You're going to check it a little bit and see that jiggle. You see the croissant
13:56is like puffy, light, aerated and we're going to put egg wash on top. Ideally I like to do is to stay
14:03within the top layer and not go to the side. I'm going to brush lightly just right here. You're
14:10avoiding the sides because you want that beautiful layer separation on the side and you want to see like
14:15flecking off and like puffing up. So if you were to put egg wash you would kind of like stick and attach
14:22those layers together. In our egg wash we put some whole eggs, a little bit of cream and a tiny bit
14:27of salt. This is only to make the croissant shiny and golden. This is now approved egg wash. Next step is baking.
14:34These are Mivi ovens. They are German ovens actually. Some of the best on market for baking. I love the
14:45precision and the consistency of it. We're going really hot. 190 for about eight to nine minutes.
14:52We want nice, crispy, flaky layers inside. We want these layers to puff up so we want to go really hot.
14:57If you want to bake at a lower temperature, you'll form like a crust outside of your
15:02noisery and it'll be like very unpleasant to eat. So you want like nice like crunchy bite
15:07and keeping that moisture in the center is very important. So you don't go really hot. Actually
15:11what's happening here is that those layers of butter and dough with elasticity and the steam inside
15:16puffing rising up and developing those layers and the texture of the croissant. All right we can we can
15:22talk we can talk but eventually we have to eat this. You know the ultimate experience. What makes it
15:27special here for me is that golden caramelized like shiny crust on the outside. You see all those layers
15:34those flaky layers will preserve them. It's light. It smells good. Don't use a regular knife to really
15:41cut through those layers. You're going to hear that flakes. You're going to see those a little flakes
15:47like falling apart which is normal and then our look inside the croissant. So here our cross section.
15:54The honeycomb defines like the fermentation the layers and everything we've been building.
15:59So you can see this right here as a little tight because I'm very picky. Could have poofed a little
16:04bit longer but overall like a pretty good croissant. That thin white line right under the crust. I call it
16:12the lining which should be like almost in existence. Should be like a super thin like paper like white line.
16:17This gets thicker. If your oven is not hard enough it's going to get thicker and thicker. You're going to
16:22slowly like dry the croissant instead of cooking it like very quickly. That will make me croissant
16:28like very unpleasant. And of course we're going to take a bite. So cheers to our beautiful croissant.
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