This recipe was created for anyone at home who would want to prepare this delicious chocolate croissant. The croissants taste really good and they are very crunchy. Follow the instructions below to prepare your easy chocolate croissant. It’s recommended to measure the weight of each ingredient. I’ve also added the measurements in cups as well if anyone doesn’t have access to a measuring scale.
How to prepare chocolate croissant
To prepare chocolate croissant, place your dry ingredients into the bowl of the stand mixer so that’s flour, sugar, salt, and instant yeast. whisk for a second, then add in your butter, water, and milk. Use a dough scraper or spatula to bring the dough together a bit then using a dough hook attachment, knead this on medium speed for three and a half minutes. We aren’t trying to develop too much gluten so three and a half minutes is perfect because it’ll be supple and slightly elastic by then.
Once it’s been kneaded remove the dough from the bowl and form it into a ball then place it in a lightly greased bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Let this rest and proof for an hour and a half or until doubled in size. Once the dough has been rested you can turn it onto the table, press it down to release all the air, and use the plastic wrap to form the dough into a rectangle shape and place it in the fridge to rest overnight.
Okay, so you’re going to start this day by making a butter block. Get two sticks of butter then place them in the center of a sheet of parchment paper and fold the parchment paper over the butter in such a way that you create a rectangle. You don’t need to measure the rectangle before forming the block —because we’re going to measure it once it’s formed and that will dictate how big we’ll roll out our dough. But if you want an estimate, I rolled mine out to about 8 by 6 inches. Beat the butter with a rolling pin then press and roll the butter evenly to all corners of the rectangle and place this in the fridge.
Take out your dough, it should have puffed up overnight, press to release the air again, and make sure you have enough flour underneath the dough. Now if you made your butter block 8 by 6 inches, roll this out to 12 inches lengthwise and 8 inches widthwise. Basically, one measurement has to match one measurement of the butter block and the other side has to be double the measurement of the other side of the butter. This works for any measurement you take that’s by measuring the butter block even before making it doesn’t matter and it’s a hassle anyways.
Once you roll the dough out, you’ll take the butter block out and make sure it’s malleable, then place it over the dough, making sure that eight inches are aligned with the eight inches of the dough. Fold the dough over the butter. You can see why we need double the size because this will cover the butter perfectly, if it doesn’t, you can stretch the dough a bit to cover the butter. Press the dough a bit just to lock in the butter then starting from the center roll out the dough until it’s between 25 to 27 inches. Make sure there’s enough flour underneath the dough the entire time. This is optional but if you’re looking for perfect lamination trim off the uneven ends of the dough. Now fold this into four layers which are called the double fold.
Fold about four inches on the right, then fold the left until it meets the right fold, then from the left complete one more full fold. At this point, cover your dough, place it in the fridge, and let it rest for half an hour.
Roll it out to about 22 inches this time and do a single fold. Fold the third end from the right, then fold the remaining third from the left. Press this down and let it rest in the freezer overnight. If you’re impatient you can let it rest in the fridge for an hour then carry on, but if you want to make croissants how they’re properly made give this another night’s rest.
After it’s rested, flour the surface and make sure the side of the crease is on your right, and then roll this out to 11 inches. You won’t have to roll much — and then rotate and roll out to 16 inches. Trim off the edges by just a little then mark the dough at intervals of three and a quarter inches. Do the same with the top then cut the dough along these intervals. You might have some extra dough then cut these pieces right in the middle to create six equal strips of dough. Place these on each other, cover with wrap, and place in the freezer for 15 minutes. In the meantime, get yourself a chocolate bar. You can buy any chocolate bar, measure its width, and cut the strips of dough to that width so the stick can fit perfectly on the dough instead of protruding out or being too small.
Get yourself the chef’s knife and a big mug of really hot water, dip the knife into the water for 30 seconds then wipe with the kitchen towel. Begin slowly cutting into the chocolate so the hot knife will melt the chocolate and allow you to cut small sticks out of this bar without breaking the chocolate. Some pieces might break and that’s okay they’re still usable. Once you’ve cut the whole bar into sticks move this to the side and take out your dough strips, and remove any excess flour from the dough.
On a surface place one stick at one end, roll the dough over it till it covers the stick entirely, then place one more stick on the dough. Roll the rest of the dough and repeat this with all the strips. Place all sticks on a baking tray with parchment paper then cover it with plastic wrap and let this proof in a turned-off oven with the light on for half an hour. After half an hour, turn off the light and let it proof for another 30 minutes – 1 hour or until you see the layers begin to split. Once they do, gently take this tray out of the oven, preheat your oven to 360 degrees Fahrenheit, and make an egg wash with one egg, a pinch of salt, a dash of milk, and a dash of heavy cream then apply it to all the croissants.
Bake these at 360 degrees Fahrenheit for 20 minutes or until they’re all evenly browned and your chocolate croissants are ready.
Ingredients:-
Dough
360g bread flour (2⅓ cups + 1 tbsp)
34g granulated sugar (3 tbsp)
8.5g salt (1.5 tsp)
8.5g instant yeast (3 tsp)
114g water (1/2 cup water)
114g milk (1/2 cup milk)
20g butter (2 tbsp)
For butter block
215g butter (about 2 sticks)
Notes:
– You can definitely knead the dough by hand for the same amount of time if you don’t have a stand mixer.
– Make sure your butter is fresh from the fridge when making the butter block.
– If you’re doing this over three days instead of two, put the dough in the freezer the second night. On the third day, take the dough out of the freezer early in the morning and place it in the fridge for 2-3 hours before working with it to allow it to defrost.
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