Tasty Tuesday ~ Brioche Croissants

Brioche Croissants

Brioche is a wonderfully rich, milk and butter loaded yeast dough. It's decadently luxurious as all baked goods of France seem to be...this will not disappoint. It's not found in croissant form much...I came up with this application for the dough a few years back, because I wanted that old familiar croissant panini feel for some specialty sandwiches I was offering.

While you will not find the light airiness of layers that is common in a traditional croissant made with puff pastry, the richness of the butter is not lacking! C'mon along, let me show you! It's really not hard at all!

Brioche Croissants (8 croissants)

• 1 package of active dry yeast
• 4 tablespoons whole milk, warmed to 110 degrees F
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 3 large eggs
• 2-3/4 cups all purpose flour
• 1-1/2 teaspoons salt
• 6 tablespoons very soft butter
• extra butter to coat proofing bowl

This has a couple of steps, but not a single one is hard! Gather your ingredients, warm your milk for about 20 seconds in the microwave...get your butter cut into tablespoon portions and set it aside. And, let's begin!

Stir the sugar into the warm milk.

Add the yeast and give it a stir. The sugar will give that yeast just the wake up call it needs. ;) Let this sit for about 5 minutes to develop the yeasty goodness.

Meanwhile, we can go on and give the eggs a light beating.

I have never noticed this disclaimer/caution on flour before! I mean, does ANYONE actually enjoy flour before it is fully cooked??? Really?? After I stopped laughing, I measured the flour...

...into the mixer bowl. Add the salt and mix the two lightly. Make a well in the center for the liquid ingredients to go into.

The yeast has become a beast! It is ready!

Add the eggs and the yeast milk to the mixer bowl with the flour and salt.

Start the mixer on low; after a minute, turn it up to medium. After just a couple of minutes, you'll have a moist center and flour up the sides of the bowl. It's time to get to the butter!

Drop in the butter chunks with the mixer still running on medium. Set your timer for 7 minutes and let your mixer do the kneading! I love my Kitchenaid Mixer! It makes the BEST bread!

While the mixer is doing the hard stuff, butter the bowl you plan to use for rising your dough.

When kneading time is done, you'll have this nice, pliable dough...it's not overly dense, and it's not sticky...just right!

Form the dough into a nice, smooth ball and roll it in the butter on the sides of the bowl.

Cover the bowl of dough and let it rise in a warm spot in your kitchen for a hour to an hour and a half...until the dough is doubled in size. The amount of time this takes will depend on how hot your kitchen is. It's pretty cool here, today; this might take a minute.

So, while that's happening, let me tell you what plans I have for this batch!

Brioche Croissants make fabulous Panini Sandwiches! And, you don't need a fancy Panini press to do so...if you have a George Foreman Grill, or one of it's counterparts, they work just fine! In fact, when we first opened our coffee shop in 2002, we had special ordered an imported actual panini grill...yes, from Italy. It was attempted to be delivered, but to an empty suite in the same shopping mall. It was returned....because no one was there! Now, of course, by now, we have our signage, it says On Higher Grounds Espresso Cafe all over the front of our shop. And, it was just a couple of doors down from where the attempted delivery had been taking place...sigh! We opened our cafe with...you guessed it...a George Foreman Grill. In retrospect, the Foreman was a helluva lot easier to clean up than the import!

It also is wonderful for regular sandwiches, if you don't want to press them. Love Chicken Salad on these, or Tuna Salad! I proof mine up to a large sandwich size...you can see how large they are in that top picture. This recipe will make 8 of those bad boys! It will make 16 small croissants.

Okay, we're back...that took a couple of hours. Punch the dough down and set on a well floured work surface. Roll the dough out like a thin crust pizza.

This is the rolled out dough. It's a good 18" diameter, and still needs to be thinner. I need a bigger table!

With a pizza cutter, cut it into halves, then quarters. Cut each quarter in half once again for 8 croissants.

I ended up rolling each triangle out even thinner, since my table was too small. Starting at the wide end of the triangle, tightly roll towards the tip.

A little girl and boy croissant rolled up...aren't they cute?

These have risen for an hour. I spray them with a fine mist water sprayer to keep the skin from drying out before they've had time to grow all the way. I'll give them another half hour while the oven is preheating to 375 degrees farenheit. Then, in they go! Bake for about 12 to 15 minutes, depending on your oven. The end result is the glorious golden goodness you see at the top of the post!

Give it a try, my Steemian friends. It's really not that hard, and it's a fun bread! Now, let me get this posted before it's 'Where's My Croisssants Wednesday!?!' and not 'Tasty Tuesday' anymore!

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