Two-Day-Old-Croissant-Blueberry Pudding

Saturday morning I made croissants. Saturday afternoon I went blueberry picking. By Monday afternoon they both had to be either used or tossed. I also had a quart and a half of milk to finish before my Wednesday pick up at the farm. All signs pointed to bread pudding.

I've said before that I love pudding. My love of pudding certainly extends to bread pudding, despite a few dry, bland puddings I have endured in the past. They don't have to be that way. Starting with a soft, absorbent bread (such as the croissants used here) and baking it in a dish deeper than you think advisable are two ways I have found to ensure a moist pudding. The recipe from the Joy of Cooking that I based this on called for only 1/4 teaspoon of salt, but after tasting my pudding (and fearing falling into the bland category) I felt it could use a little more.

So here is a moist and tasty bread pudding studded with sweet and tart blueberries--a good dessert; a decadent breakfast.

Croissant-Blueberry Pudding

adapted from a Joy of Cooking bread pudding recipe

• 4 cups stale croissant cubes (4 medium-sized croissants)
• 3 cups whole milk, warmed
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 3 eggs, separated
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 1 tsp. vanilla
• 1/2 tsp. nutmeg
• juice and zest of half a lemon
• 1 1/2 cups blueberries

• Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter a 1 1/2 to 2-quart baking dish and set aside.
• Add the salt to the warm milk and soak the croissant cubes in this mixture for 15 minutes. Combine the egg yolks, sugar, vanilla, and nutmeg and beat well. Add the lemon juice and zest to the yolk mixture and beat to combine. Whip egg whites to stiff peaks. Pour the egg yolk mixture and the blueberries over the soaked croissant and stir gently until well combined. Fold in the egg whites.
• Pour mixture into prepared baking dish. Set baking dish in a pan of hot water and bake for 45 minutes to an hour.

Serve warm with (ice) cream or have cold the next morning for breakfast.

Reward of a Sleepless Night

I hardly slept a wink Friday night. Which is odd, because I always sleep. I love to sleep. I live to sleep. But on Friday night, I didn't sleep. I went to bed around eleven and was still awake at midnight. I heard every word of the hour-long, drunken conversation outside my window. I heard different drunken people retching in the street. I heard crickets. I heard my refrigerator cycle on and off. At 3:30 I got up and made myself a cup of hot milk and read a chapter of Le Comte de Monte-Cristo. I turned my light back off and tried to go to sleep. At 4:30 I decided to make croissants--just a half batch.

There was a point at which I asked myself if I was really doing this and wondered what other people did when they couldn't sleep. But I let it go and dissolved my yeast and kneaded my dough and pounded my butter and five hours later I was eating a perfect croissant with some of my own (less than perfect, but still delicious) raspberry jam.

Croissants

adapted from Andrew Whitley

• 5 g active dry yeast
• 385 g milk, cold
• 600 g strong white flour
• 5 g sea salt
• 250 g butter, slightly salted or unsalted
• 1 egg, beaten for brushing

• I (when croissant making isn't my answer to insomnia) prepare my butter the night before so I don't have to mess with it the day of. Place your butter in the middle of a plastic bag or between two sheets of plastic wrap and carefully mash it down with a rolling pin until it becomes rollable. Roll the butter out into a sheet, making it as rectangular as possible, using the edges of the bag to your advantage. Make sure your butter is well wrapped and place in the fridge.
• Dissolve the yeast in the cold milk. It seems like the yeast might never dissolve, but it does. Make up a dough with the flour, salt, and yeast mixture. It should be a pretty stiff, stretchy dough. Too soft and the butter will break through the dough and then you won't have the layers you want. After kneading your dough for about ten minutes, place it in a plastic bag and refrigerate for at least half an hour.
• Roll out your dough until it is approximately twice as long as it is wide. Place your butter sheet over two-thirds of the rolled out dough, handling it as little as possible. If it is the wrong shape, or if there isn't enough at the edges, break off bits and put them where they need to be. Fold the unbuttered dough over half of the buttered section. Fold the remaining buttered section on top of what was the unbuttered section. Congratulations, you have a billet and two butter layers. Now roll it out again in the opposite direction than you did before, again aiming for it to be twice as long as it is wide. This time you want to do a book turn: fold the narrow edges in towards each other so they meet in the middle (leave some space for the next step of the fold), then fold the dough in the middle as if you're closing a book. You know have 8 dough-butter-dough layers. Put your dough back in its bag and back in the fridge.
• After half an hour (or up to two hours) take your dough out of the fridge and roll it out again, the opposite way from the last time. Do another book turn. Now you have 32 layers, which Andrew says is the "maximum desirable number for a croissant dough" and he, too, defers to experts. Put your dough in the fridge for another half-hour.
• This will be your final roll. Roll out the dough so it is about 5mm thick. Andrew likes equilateral triangles, but I have had better luck with triangles that are taller than they are wide at the base. So. Square up your dough and cut it horizontally so you have two very long pieces of dough that are each about (and here I revert to inches) 6 inches wide, a little more if possible. Take a ruler and make a mark every 4 inches along the bottom of one of your strips. Make a mark 2 inches in on the top and then, starting at that mark, every 4 inches. Using these marks as guides, cut out triangles. Repeat the process on the other piece of dough. Feel free to vary the measurement depending on how big or small you want your croissants. Andrew says this recipe makes 16, but I usually only make 10, give or take.
• Make a half-inch notch in the center of the base of each triangle. To form a croissant, take a triangle in your hand. Hold the apex and the base and stretch it gently. Then gently stretch the base. You should end up with something vaguely resembling the Eiffel Tower. How fitting. Place the stretched out triangle back on your work surface. Fold the base tightly over on itself and then, taking the apex with one hand, keep stretching it slightly while you roll the croissant up with your other hand. Place on a parchment lined baking sheet so the tip is underneath the croissant (otherwise it might unroll during proving.) Turn the ears inward to make the classic croissant shape. If that makes any sense at all, repeat with the remaining triangles.
• Once all the croissants are on baking sheets brush them with the egg wash and place in a warm (but not too warm or all the butter will ooze out) place to prove. At about 80°F proving takes 1-1/2 to 1-3/4 hours. Once the croissants are done proving--they look puffy and fragile and somewhat transformed--gently brush again with egg wash and place in a 400°F oven for 15-20 minutes.
• You can also make pains au chocolat by cutting out rectangles instead of triangles and rolling a stick of good chocolate up in the dough. Pinch the edges together so the chocolate doesn't run out during baking. Wash, prove and bake as for croissants.

Eat warm out of the oven plain or with your favorite jam.

Croissants

I hesitated before posting this. I think I can do better. But for a second attempt and a dubious apartment oven, these croissants were as scrumptious and flaky as I could have hoped. They certainly got me dreaming about try number three. I made eight croissants and a couple pains au chocolat, although they were more pain than chocolat and next time I'll make twice as many from the same amount of dough.

Croissants

Andrew Whitley (mostly)

• 5 g active dry yeast
• 385 g milk, cold
• 600 gstrong white flour
• 5 g sea salt
• 250 g butter, slightly salted or unsalted
• 1 egg, beaten for brushing

• I (Emily not Andrew) prepare my butter the night before so I don't have to mess with it the day of. Place your butter in the middle of a plastic bag or between two sheets of plastic wrap and carefully mash it down with a rolling pin until it becomes rollable. Roll the butter out into a sheet, making it as rectangular as possible, using the edges of the bag to your advantage. Make sure your butter is well wrapped and place in the fridge. Sleep well.
• Dissolve the yeast in the cold milk. Make up a fairly stiff, stretchy dough with the flour, salt, and yeast mixture. The texture of the dough must not be too soft or the butter will break through it during the folding and rolling process. Once the dough is developed to the right extent (knead for 10 minutes or so), put it in a plastic bag and into the refrigerator for a minimum of half an hour.
• Dust the worktop with flour and roll the dough into a rectangle twice as long as it is wide and about 8mm thick. Place your sheet of butter over 2/3 of the rolled out dough. If it is not quite the right shape, break or cut off the edges and place the butter where it needs to be. Fold the uncovered third of the dough over half the buttered part and the remaining buttered part back over the resulting sandwich. This will for a 'billet', or parcel, with alternating layers of dough-butter-dough-butter-dough. It is usual to keep a count of the number of fat layers: at this stage you have two. Make sure that the edges are neatly aligned. Pinch the rims of the dough together to stop the butter slipping around when you roll the billet out.
• Roll the dough out in the opposite direction to the first roll. You should aim to produce another rectangle about twice as long as it is wide. This time, instead of folding the dough in three, do a 'book turn'. Pick up the short edges of the dough and fold them inwards until they meet in the middle. Then fold the two 'pages' together as if you were closing a book. You have now got eight fat layers. Put the dough back in its bag and into the fridge for at least half an hour and up to two hours. If you leave it for too long, there is a risk that the butter will go very hard and break up into flinty pieces when you next roll the dough. This can be remedied by allowing the dough to warm up a little before rolling. But the problem is usually to keep the dough cool enough to stop the butter melting. If it does, it will not form proper layers. The other reason for keeping the dough cold is to control the rate at which the yeast is fermenting: you don't want it to be too lively at this stage because it is hard to create good dough-butter laminations with a puffy dough.
• Roll the dough out again in the opposite direction to the previous roll and do another book turn. You now have 32 fat layers, which is the maximum desirable number for a croissant dough, according to the experts. Return the dough to the fridge for another half an hour or so to keep the butter firm.
• The dough is now ready for its final roll. Roll it out to a thickness of about 5mm. Cut into equilateral triangles measuring 10-12.5cm. You can, of course, make your croissants smaller or larger, as you wish. Before you commit yourself to cutting the dough, mark out the triangles (or squares for pains au chocolat) to make sure that you are going to get about the right number. Rest the cut pieces for a few minutes to allow the gluten to become more extensible. To make a croissant, proceed as follows:
• Grasp the apex of the triangle with one hand and the base with the other. As gently as you can--without tearing the dough--stretch the triangle until it is almost twice as long (from base to apex) as it was. Pick up the base in both hands and stretch it slightly outwards. You should now have something resembling the Eiffel Tower. Fold the edge of the base firmly over on itself and then, with the fingers of your left hand, grasp the tope of the tower but keep it close to the worktop. Gently pulling with the left hand, roll up the croissant towards the tip with the right hand, keeping it under slight tension as you roll. This helps to create further layers of dough; more importantly, by putting the gluten under some tension, it creates a structure that will prove up into a bold, lively and flaky croissant. Place on parchment-lined baking trays in such a way that the tip of the croissant is held down under the weight of the body; if you leave it showing, it may unravel during proof or baking. Turn the 'claws' inwards slightly to form the classic croissant (crescent) shape.
• Brush carefully with beaten egg, ensuring that there are no unsightly tide marks round the edges. Cover and set to prove in a place that is not so warm that there is any danger of the butter melting. If it does, you will see disappointing puddles of butter oozing from your croissants as they bake; and if the butter is visible, it certainly won't be doing its job between the layers of dough.
• After sufficient proof, the croissants should be appreciably bigger and the finger test will tell you that their structure has become puffy and decidedly fragile. Bake them in a fairly hot oven (200°C; 400-425°F) for about 15 minutes, until they are golden brown.
• To make pains au chocolat, cut the prepared croissant dough not into triangles, but into rectangles about 10 x 5cm. Place a generous stick of chocolate along one short edge and roll the dough up around it. Pinch the ends together to stop the chocolate flowing out during baking. Egg wash, prove and bake as for croissants.

Makes 16 croissants or pains au chocolat.