Made croissants for the first time (A Claire Saffitz Recipe)

I used Claire Saffitz’s recipe which turned out amazing. I am not an advanced baker by any means more like an intermediate home cook/baker. I’ve made my fair share of sourdough, cookies, bagels etc and this was the most rewarding recipe I’ve ever made not to mention very meditative. I wanted to mention a few tips and also things I will be doing next time.

  1. Make this a 3 day process instead of 2. The recipe can be made in 2 days which is what the video shows but I feel doing this in 3 days gives the détrempe time to rest and relax which will eliminate tearing while proofing….so will not handling the dough to much, over mixing and adding too much flour while rolling out lol. Day 1 mix Détrempe Day 2 layer dough day 3 shape and bake

  2. I would not place your hot simmering pan of water in the oven for too long or it will become too warm in the oven which will melt the butter. My oven temp was at 30C after that and I needed it get down to 23-24C which wasted time that could’ve spent proofing. I would say leave it in 20-45 seconds max to warm the oven up a little or I would turn the oven on for 45 seconds to get it a bit warm and use a spray bottle with filtered water to spray the inside of the oven to create humidity, just don’t let the humidity get over 80% mine was between 70-77%

  3. Absolutely 100% get a hygrometer if you are baking yeasty and naturally leavened doughs regularly I kept this in my oven to monitor the temp and humidity since I don’t have that feature on my oven. I got mine from amazon it’s a Thermo pro.

  4. Before proofing and after shaping using a spray bottle with filtered water lightly spray your croissants for some moisture and cover them up loosely with cling film.

  5. Heat oven to 500F then back down to 375F for a heat blast.

I would like to try with adding some steam in the oven if any one has tried this please let me know how it went I’m curious to know if it will affect the croissants texture in a negative way. I figure if steam is impossible in bread baking for a nice rise and crumb that it should do the same for croissants but I’m not so sure about the butter.

Hope this helps someone.