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Contestants: Arsicult, Juniper, Jina Bakes, Jane the Bakery, Neighbor Bakehouse, and… Safeway (yes, we need Costco in here next time!)
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I first saw these car wheel–like, tightly layered pastries at Jina Bakes in San Francisco. They switched up the monthly flavors—strawberry, hojicha, lemon custard—and I loved every single one. Suddenly, they started sprouting in every bakery I visited, and I knew I had to bake it myself. My confidence was boosted after successfully baking croissants after 6 trials and experimenting with both sweet and savory versions. I rolled up my sleeves again and even bought pastry rings just to try making this viral “New York Roll” at home, filled with passionfruit coconut pastry cream and topped with dark chocolate ganache.
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Friend sent me a tiktok video with scallion croissants, as someone who loves scallion steam bun, scallion pancake and of course meat floss, I decided to recreate the scallion croissants with meat floss. Thanks to multiple croissant trials at pandemic, I was able to leverage the Weekend Bakery croissant recipe and came up with the recipe to combine my favorite flavors with my favorite pastry texture.
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Today (02/12/2021) is the Lunar New Year. 2021 is the year of Ox, Happy “Niu” Year! “Niu” is the pronunciation of ox in mandarin, in Chinese, croissants are also called Niu Jiao Bao, Ox Horn Bread because the shape of croissants. To celebrate the Lunar New Year, I adopted croissants to a more Asian flavor with my favorite Cantonese steam bun – lava bun with salted egg yolk 流沙包, and taro fillings.
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Innovating croissants to have more Asian elements again after sesame croissant. This time, I included Japanese elements: matcha, red bean and mochi. These ingredients have been use either individually or as combo for boba, mochi fillings, ice cream, crepe, etc. This time after upgrading from last time, fillings did not escape, and the aesthetics has improved! There is definitely a large room for improvement especially the lamination of dough with matcha powder.
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After trying out rainbow croissants and chocolate strip croissants, I want to innovate a bit and try baking sesame croissants, with sesame powder in dough and also sesame fillings with mochi wrapped inside. Sesame croissants turned out very crispy, the flowy sesame and soft mochi contrasted the crispy dough, giving very unique texture!
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So! After 6 trials for original croissant and 1 tryout on chocolate croissant, I am still here! Trying the colorful, rainbow croissants this time! I baked this new batch of rainbow croissants with more precision such as desired dough temperature (24-26C), croissant shape measurements(4.5mm x 10cm x 25cm), proofing temperature (26-28C), listening to croissants etc. with tricks from the LONGER and more detailed croissant baking videos I watched.
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After 6 trials on baking original croissants, I want to get my hands on the “prettier” and slightly “fancier” croissants — colored and flavored ones. This time I am making the chocolate croissants. The chocolate sheet was drier than planned, resulting in some croissant not fully covered in chocolate sheet, and the chocolate layer was a bit too crispy. As usual, as my lab notebook, I have recorded mistakes and takeaway in details here.
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From the 3 months from May to August 2020, I have 6 croissant trials in total, trying 2 different recipes’ ingredients, 4 different butter brands, and finally had some success. Sharing these 6 trials’ key takeaways, including comparison of 6 trials in ingredients, resting, lamination, shaping & proofing and baking temp & time. KEY TO […]
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My second time making croissants and I think there are a few possible errors I might have made: 1-kneaded dough too long to form gluten 2-lamination was too complex and formed more layers than my current technical skills 3-baking temperature was not right for the dough ingredients/lamination methods; followed too many recipes 太貪心啦!
