Croissants

every now and then i like to try a new culinary pursuit, learn to do something i've never done before. to make something over and over until i get it just right. like learning to make a layered cake that isn't lopsided, making cheesecake that isn't lumpy or dry, making the perfect chocolate chip cookie, mastering pie crust. usually in the process my family gets burnt out on whatever my latest project is and just as i've perfected it they don't want to eat any more for awhile. so lately i've been interested in pastry and learning how to make it. so i decided to start with croissants because i think they are really yummy and once i've mastered them i can add different fillings to them like chocolate. and i love warm chocolate croissants!
the thing about pastry making is that it is a long drawn our process. making the dough, letting the dough rest, rolling it, resting again, rolling again, resting again, rolling again, then cutting and shaping, letting it rise, and then finally cooking it. i've always been very intimidated by the process, too many opportunities to mess it up. so i started this process by pulling out my trusty joy of cooking and looked up a recipe for croissants. if you want to learn how to do something this cookbook is a really good place to start. it has a lot of good basic recipes and good instructions for how to do things. on wednesday andi and i made the dough together and rolled it out a couple of times. and then it sat in the refrigerator until this morning when i finally did the last rolling and cut them out and shaped them. they didn't rise very well this time because i think i let them sit in the refregerator too long. you're only supposed to let it sit for at most 24 hours and i left it for about 2 days. they still turned out all right even if they were a little flat and they still tasted good. i'm going to try them again and this time i won't let them sit as long in the refrigerator and see if i can get them to rise a little bit better. i'm going to spare you all from reading the recipe because it is has long drawn out instructions and because chances are you don't want to learn to make your own croissants and you think i'm completely crazy for doing so! if you really want to know i'm going to leave you to look it up in your own copy of the joy of cooking and if you don't own a copy, you really should buy one! just click on the picture of it on my side bar. :)