Croissants

Ingredients

• 500g strong white bread flour, plus more for rolling
• 10g fine salt
• 55g caster sugar
• 7g instant yeast
• 140ml cold whole milk
• 140ml cold water
• 50g unsalted butter, softened, for the dough
• 280g cold unsalted butter with at least 82% fat, for laminating
• 1 egg beaten with 1 tbsp milk, for glazing

Before you cook

• Mix the flour, salt, sugar and yeast in a large bowl, keeping the salt and yeast on opposite sides until the flour is between them.
• Add the milk, water and the fifty grams of softened butter, and bring everything together into a rough dough.
• Knead for five minutes only, until the dough is smooth but still slightly firm.
• Shape the dough into a flat rectangle, wrap it, and chill it for at least four hours or overnight.
• Lay the 280g of cold butter between two sheets of baking paper.

Steps

1. Beat the cold butter flat with a rolling pin, then roll it into a neat square about eighteen centimetres across and three quarters of a centimetre thick.
2. Chill the butter square for twenty minutes, so it is cold but still bends without cracking.
3. Roll the chilled dough on a lightly floured counter into a rectangle about thirty-six by eighteen centimetres.
4. Sit the butter square on one half of the dough and fold the bare half over it, pinching the edges together to seal the butter in.
5. Turn the parcel ninety degrees and roll it out gently and evenly into a rectangle three times as long as it is wide.
6. Fold the rectangle in three like a business letter, bringing one end to the middle and folding the other over the top.
7. Wrap the dough and chill it for one hour.
8. Repeat the rolling and letter fold twice more, chilling for a full hour between each turn.
9. Wrap the laminated dough after the third fold and chill it for at least two hours or overnight.
10. Roll the cold dough out into a long rectangle about twenty centimetres wide and four millimetres thick.
11. Trim the ragged edges square with a sharp knife so the layers are exposed.
12. Mark the long edge every twelve centimetres and cut the sheet into long triangles.
13. Cut a one-centimetre notch into the short base of each triangle.
14. Stretch each triangle gently to lengthen it, then roll it up from the notched base towards the point, keeping the tension even.
15. Set the croissants point-down on two lined baking trays, leaving plenty of space between them.
16. Brush them lightly with the egg glaze.
17. Prove them at warm room temperature, around 25C, for two to three hours, until they are visibly puffed and jiggle when you shake the tray.
18. Heat the oven to 200C fan.
19. Glaze the croissants a second time, brushing along the layers rather than across them.
20. Bake for eighteen to twenty minutes until deep golden brown right down into the folds.
21. Cool them on a rack for at least fifteen minutes, because the crumb is still setting.