Sourdough Croissant Recipe | Jessie Mo's Baking Co. | Simply Bread Co.

So cool to see all those layers and that super yellow butter. I love butter. Butter makes the world go around. Hi, I'm Jessi. I'm the owner and baker from Jessimo's Baking Co. and today we are going to make sourdough croissants. First thing we have to do is feed our starter or make a levain. So we start by weighing everything out. So I take a little bit from my mother's starter, 45 grams. So I'm going to pour about 100 grams of water into my starter jar and then I am going to mix it up so it's milky and easier to combine with the flour. Okay, that's good. And then I will tear my skew and then measure in 100 grams of flour. Always spilling some. That's okay. That's what towels are for. Okay, 100 grams. Mixy, mixy. Mixy business. You're always looking for a real thick consistency. That's why using a scale is so great because you want a true even amount of flour and water. And this feeding ratio right now was a 1 to 2. So that means I had one part starter and two parts each of flour and water. And so I'll let this go overnight usually. And then in the morning we get to mix up our dough, make some croissants. So you just want to really get all those flour clumps in there to make sure it's all evenly distributed and all those bacteria get the food. And then just scrape down the jar, make it as clean as you can. Okay. And then we'll cover it and in the morning we'll make some dough. All right, here we are on day two of our sourdough croissants and we have everything we need. We have our flour, our milk, sugar, butter, and our sourdough starter. It is ripe and ready to go. You can see all the bubbles. It's risen and just started to fall just a little bit. And so we are going to first put our milk into the mixing bowl. You want to start with your liquids so they're easier to incorporate. We're going to get all of our starter in there. It's kind of cool seeing like all the bubbles and I'm like a gloopy mess. It's like slime for adults. Yeah. Okay. That's all in there. Move that to the side. Keep a clean workstation. Go for our sugar and our flour. Okay. It's in there. Okay. Now we're going to put our dough hook. And we'll start mixing. And so we'll let this mix until it's formed a nice dough ball and starts kind of clearing the sides. And then we'll actually let it rest five to 10 minutes before we add our butter in. Mixy mixy. Okay. So it's all come together. It's kind of cleaning the sides of the bowl. So I'm going to shut it off. We're going to let it relax for about five to 10 minutes and then we will add our butter. Okay. So our dough has been resting for about 10 minutes. So now we're going to add the butter. We're just going to go one cube at a time. We'll just let this go for a couple minutes. We're just kind of looking for a nice smooth surface for the balloon to have some strength to it. I like when it cleans the sides of the bowls really nice because it makes my cleanup easier. Okay. Going to take it out. That comes in one nice glob. And I'm just going to give it a quick little knead. Checking for the smooth surface and that it's not too sticky, not too firm. Also, I just like doing this because it's fun to play with. So put it in a good little ball, put it in our clear container so we can measure its fermentation proofing levels. A bit of quick little press. I can make sure it's all flat in there and we will let this rise until about doubled in size and then we'll stick it in the fridge and start on our croissants tomorrow. Okay. So we've let our dough proof in the fridge overnight and now we're going to make our butter block. So we start with our parchment, wrap that up, grab our rolling pin, let some anger out. Or if your kid is sleeping like mine usually is, you just kind of really press down on it so you don't wake her up. So I kind of want to make this into a perfect little eight by eight square. So I'm going to try to make a little pocket for myself with the parchment and then spread that butter out into all four corners. It gets easier as it gets thinner, but since it's so cold, it's a little difficult. This is where having a dough sheeter or something comes in handy too. I have a broad and tailor that makes my life pretty easy. I really like it. It's just manual. And I just found a little empty spot in my cabinet and put that in there and take it out when I make croissants, but you don't have to have one. Obviously you can totally do this without it, but if you're making them for a business or something, or if you're just making them a lot, then a sheeter is going to help your life a lot. So to make sourdough croissants properly and well, it really is a true three to four day process and timing and temperature is like just everything. So when you're rolling out the butter sheet into your dough, you want it to be temping between 58 and 60 degrees. Otherwise your butter sheet is going to break, but you know, even if you don't, like it's not the end of the world, your butter breaks, it's okay. They're still going to taste good. But yeah, so what we're looking for here is that it's bendable without breaking and like the 58 to 60 degree temperature. So we have a little ways to go 52. So we'll wrap that back up, stick it over to the side. Now we can take our fully proofed croissant dough that was refrigerated overnight. You can see all the bubbles, all the webbing all throughout a nice dome top. Just going to sprinkle some flour and take it out. We can see how easy it comes out when it's nicely proofed. So I'm just going to kind of flatten it a little bit, sort of make a square. You could also like slice the top. When you first put it in the container, you can give it a crisscross and it'll kind of open up and be a little bit easier to roll out into a square. So you want a nice, gentle, even pressure. It's more of like a push kind of pull, then like a really like smashing it in there and just give it another turn. And we're not going to go very big or very thin here just because it's not necessary yet. We're just looking to encapsulate that butter sheet before we perform our first turn. Just looking to get like a an 8 by like 16 ish rectangle. I like to keep moving it so it doesn't stick and so it also releases the tension. You overwork your dough, you're just going to end up with a tough croissant and it's just going to be harder because the dough is going to do what the dough wants, not what you want. Okay, let's test. I think that's about right. Okay, so we will take our butter sheet, unwrap it. I love how yellow this butter is. It's just beautiful. Yellow is also my favorite color, if you didn't already know that. Flip it over. So I love this butter because only ingredient on it is cream. The butter makes such a difference in the end result, pretty much of everything, but croissants especially because it's dough, butter, dough, butter, dough, butter, dough, butter. You eat a croissant, you're eating butter. So it has to be good. It has to be quality. It has to taste good. So we're just going to wrap this bad boy up, fold in all the sides, encapsulate it, and you need to let it rest for a little bit to kind of let it come to temperature a little bit so the butter sheet doesn't break and give the gluten a chance to relax because if I tried to roll it out right now, after just having rolled it out, it wouldn't really want to go. It would just kind of spring back and tear maybe. So we're looking for both the dough and the butter sheet to be between 58 and 60 degrees. So we're at 50. So we got a little ways to go. That's okay because good things take time. Good morning. It is the next day. Our dough and our butter sheet have been in the fridge overnight and now we're going to take them out and let them come to about 58 to 60 degrees before we perform our first turn. Okay, so we're back. We let the dough rest. It has come to about 60 degrees. So now we can roll it out and perform our first turn. So I'm just going to gently flour, make sure it's not already stuck to my surface, myself a little space, and it's just a gentle pressure. We don't want to break our butter. We don't want to separate anything. Just nice and gentle back and forth. You know, I love to bake because sometimes it can be really mindless and like when I'm shaping sourdough and then sometimes it can be a challenge, which I love, like croissants. It's such a long process and, you know, it takes a lot of fine tuning and mistakes to get it right. And I think that's what makes it fun and challenging. And it's really cool to say, hey, I did that. So we're just looking to get it about 20 inches in length, 8 to 10 inches in height. Just releasing the tension, making sure it's going to come back on itself and not stick to the surface. It's not going to be perfect. That's okay. If you had a sheeter, it might be, but hand rolling is just as nice. Okay, so now that we have our big old rectangle, we get to perform our first turn. So we're going to fold it in thirds, like a letter. So we're just going to go this. I'm going to flatten it down a bit, fold the other half right on top, and that's your first turn. So we're going to cover this, stick it in the fridge for about 30 minutes. And after that, we'll take it back out and do our second one. All right, we let the dough rest in the fridge. And now we are going to unwrap and perform our second turn. And again, we're just going to do even pressure throughout, not really pushing super hard to break the butter, just enough pressure to where it wants to move. And we can give it a nice fold. It's kind of cool, you could start to see like the butter coming through all that, the yellow of the butter. Release some tension, give it a little turn, roll it out the other ways. So this time we're going to go a little bit thinner, developing those layers. We don't want it real thick at the end, so it'll be that much harder to roll out. Pick it up again. The less you work with the dough, kind of the better. You don't want it to like spring back on you. If it spring backs on you, that's when you know that you're doing a little too much. And the dough will tell you. You gotta listen to the dough. It's like grandma. Grandma knows everything. She'll tell you. I love my grandma. She's the best. We are ready to fold this again. So we're still doing a letter, going to press it down, fold it on again. I like to cut it so it's easier to roll for the next turn. So just slice it right down the center and then you can start to see like the layers developing here, which is a pretty cool sight. A little slice for Rooney. You check your work. Okay and now we'll wrap it back up, stick it in the fridge for one more turn. Okay we're back. Okay so we've let the dough rest for about another 30 minutes, so we're going to unwrap again and perform our third and final turn. A little flour, dusty dust, and flip. And that same even push pull pressure. Always making sure that you're not going to stick. And now you can really start to see like how the yellow of the butter is coming through. And I have some good croissant. We're gonna go to France. I think that's my favorite line. Oh we're gonna go to France. Turny turn, rolly roll, push pull. See that's how thin the layers get. You can roll that back. Flour. Okay now I'm gonna fold it again for our final turn. Letters fold. Okay and I'm going to slice it down the side again. It's just easier for me to roll it that way and I get to check my work. See all those layers come in. Not bad, not bad, not bad. Okay we're gonna wrap it up and let it rest in the fridge for maybe an hour or two. But usually I will do all my turns in the morning, leave it in the fridge all day, and then shape after my daughter goes to bed at like seven. Okay we are back to roll out and shape our croissant dough. Unwrap this little beautiful dough baby. Then you can see how it's pliable. It's ready. Flour. Flipperoni. So we're gonna go thin this time because it's our final one and we want to get a nice small layers and make about 10 to 12 croissants out of here. Nice even pressure. Make sure I'm not going to stick. This part actually takes kind of a while getting the shape right. It's like marbling all the yellow coming through. Just always making sure it's not sticking. Trying to make it as even as possible so I don't have that much waste. Even though it's not waste it'll go for a snack in my tummy or my daughter's. We are about good. Just measure usually about 20 inches across. We're good. So now we're going to measure four inches from the edge. Make the little mark every four inches. Okay and then cut along those marks. This little bit will be for snackies and we will make a diagonal cut from edge to edge to make our triangles. Our croissants are cut. So what we're going to do take them out. Give the end a little bit of a stretch. You can kind of cut this here a little. Give you a wider base and then just carefully roll them on up. Give it a little love pat. Put it on the tree. Okay so all of our croissants are rolled and nicely placed on our baking sheet. So we're going to cover them with plastic wrap and let them proof overnight. We are back with our proofed croissants. We let them proof overnight and you can tell that they're done and ready for the oven by that little jiggle jiggle that wobble wobble test. You can also see the separation and the layers start to form. So we are going to give these an egg wash and stick them in the oven. So you want to be pretty gentle with the egg wash. You just want to get the tops of each side of the roll because you want to show off your layers and so coloration is going to be different where the egg washes. It's going to give that nice brown colorful sheen. You also want to be careful not to press too hard because these are full of air and you don't want to degas them. So take your time with your little paintbrush like you're back in school so you don't have to paint on the lines if you don't want to. I'm always really quiet when I'm working because I work by myself during naps. I have to be quiet so I don't really get to tell stories that often. I think sourdough croissants are kind of rare because they do take so long. You know the three or four day process versus if you're going to use yeast it's a two day maybe one and a half maybe. But there's so many added benefits like I love the sourdough croissants because my customers with gluten sensitivities they don't have any issue eating these and that's just so nice to be able to cater to that community. And you know this is the way bread was intended and all leavened goods for that matter. It wasn't until whenever baker's yeast came around is when bread kind of started getting a bad rap. Bread's the center of so many cultures and so many tables. But yeah if you've got a rolling pin some flour and some butter and a sourdough starter you can sourdough croissants at any level. They're going to be good no matter what you do. They don't have to be perfect. They're going to be good. Your family's going to love them. Whoever you serve it to is going to be like oh my god I went to France with this croissant. They are all egg washed. We are ready to put them in the oven. We preheated the oven to 375 and we're going to bake them for about 25 minutes until they're a nice golden brown. Okay it's been about 30 minutes and our croissants are ready to come out of the oven. Yeah the joy of a freshly baked sourdough croissant. Let's cut it open see how I did. Plates on point. Oh oh my god I nailed it. Croissants should be a mess.