Sometimes it feels like more is better, especially whenyou’rein the kitchen. More chocolate, more pizza, more salt, more recipes:all things thatshould have limitless bounds, if you ask me.Though in just a few special cases, less isactually more. Being less fussy and doing less workcanyielda better final product. This is the story of asurprising(andnotoriously fussy)character: the chocolate croissant, a.k.a. pain au chocolat.
Let me introduce you to ourPain auChocolatrecipe, originallyadded to our website in 2009,courtesy ofour research and development team.Loosely based on ourBaker’s Croissants,it starts with a yeasted, slightly enriched dough that encasesa beautiful butter block and sticks of rich, bittersweet chocolate.
John Sherman
As with most laminated dough. the butterisencased by the dough(or“locked in”), and then the doughisrolled and folded repeatedly to createlotsof layers.Theoriginal recipecallsfor four sets of what bakers call either a “single fold” or a “letter fold.”
What’s a letter fold, you ask?The dough is essentiallyfolded in thirds, as if folding a piece of paperto put in a business envelope. The bottom thirdis foldedup and covers the middle third, and then the top thirdis foldeddown, covering that same section.
John Sherman
This process of performing letter foldsis repeated another three timesin the original Pain auChocolatrecipe, with some rest periods in between.The final resultis163layers of dough and butter!
If you’re thinkingthatalmost200layersseem excessive,you mightbe onto something.
How many folds are too many?
“Man,that’s a LOT of folds!”
Thisis precisely what King Arthur baking ambassadorMartin Philipthought when he startedplayingaround with the Pain auChocolatrecipein hopes of coming up with achocolate version.
To see if his gut instinct was right, Martin compared the four-letter-fold process to other well-known bakers and bakeries. Sure enough, bakers like former King Arthur Bakery director Jeffrey Hamelman, Roger Gural (formerly of Arcade Bakery in Tribeca), Karen Bornarth (of Hot Bread Kitchenin Brooklyn), and Bruno Albouze (of the eponymous San Diego bakery), and evenTeam USAat the2016Coupe du Monde(the World Cup of Baking) all use fewer folds (and in some cases far fewer folds) in their croissants.
Wasthere something these bakers were achieving that we were missinginour pastries?
John Sherman
What arewe missing?
Now that it was clearKing Arthur’soriginalPain auChocolatrecipe had far more folds,andthus morelayers,thansimilar recipes, it was time to let the baked goods do the talking.
Rick Holbrook
Martinmadethe recipe as written, including four letter folds(making all163layers).
And then he made another version,one where he aimed to create amarginallymore openstructure— whathe described as aslightly wider“honeycomb” texture on the inside.This version had just two sets of folds instead of four: one letter fold followed by one “book fold,” or“double fold.”(In a book fold, the two short ends of arectangleare folded toward the center until they meet in the middle. The whole packet is then folded in half down the middle as if closing a book.)
Croissant math is a little tricky since youhave toaccount for all the placeswherethe dough touchesdough(it’s only a layer if it’s dough-butter-dough).But trust me when I say that, unbelievable as it might seem,Martin reduced the number of folds from163layers to a mere25layers.
Rick Holbrook
Fewer folds in less time
There’s one other key change Martin made to the lamination process aside from simply reducing the number of folds. He performed the folds back to back with no chilling time between.*Gasp!*
No chillingtime? Isn’t that one of the pillars of perfect pastry? Roll your dough, fold,chill, repeat. Isn’t resting the dough essential, to allow thegluten to relax?
It is to a point. If you tried to perform the original four sets of folds back to back, you would have ended your attempt intearsof frustration. It’s practically impossible to roll dough that many timesall at oncebecause the gluten would become too strong. But with just two folds, the gluten doesn’t get activated quite as readily.The dough is moreforgivingand you can almost trick it into behaving if you work quickly.
Martin made thisshortcut version of laminated dough but otherwise kept the formula the same. He put the packets aside to proof and continuedonto make two versions of Pain auChocolat: one with the original 163 layers and one with a mere 25.
Rick Holbrook
The proof is in the pastry
As Martin says, the structure told the tale.According to him,the originalfour-letter-foldrecipe had “many fine layersthatcompressed into one another, creating a tight structure.”
Rick Holbrook
Slicing into the pastries revealed that the one with fewer folds had a gorgeous open texture that truly did look like a honeycomb, as well as more clearly defined layers.
Rick Holbrook
What happened?
When you get to the point where your dough has160+layers, the butter is pressed so incredibly thin that it doesn’t have quite enough moisture to create the steam that typically makes the dough layers separate and puff.Plus, thedough is stretched so tightly that it resists the puffing motion.
Instead ofopening upinto a beautiful open crumb (that“honeycomb” structure), a croissant made from such highly manipulated dough is tight and has almost a cell-like appearance on the inside— not exactly what most of us are looking for when we bite into a delicate, crispy croissant.
Find your quintessentialpastry
Could this truly be right?Could fewer foldsactually producea better final product, orin this case, a more desirable croissant?The pictures of the pastry baked as sheets don’t lie.
Rick Holbrook
That’s not to say this method isthedefinitive process for making laminated dough— just consider some of the French pastry chefs who go through painstaking measures to create a tightly layered structure. To them, the small cellular texture is what defines success. But for others, an open honeycomb-like inside with a flaky, rough-puff-pastry-like texture is the end goal.
Bottom line: what defines one person’s quintessential croissant may not be the same for the next, and there’s room for alltypes of approaches— we've simply opted for an open-crumb croissant with more distinct layers. The shatteringly crispy shards that fly everywhere at first bite are like croissant confetti, and the distinct, buttery layers beg to be pulled apart one at a time. It's pastry made perfect.
Rick Holbrook
Bake, rate, and review our Pain au Chocolat recipe, and let us know exactly how many folds you prefer your in your croissants, in the comments, below.
Cover photo by Liz Neily.
