We’re getting ready to go home to Sainte-Foy-La-Grande again. And it doesn’t feel too soon at all. Not that I’m counting, but it is 3 weeks and 4 days before we arrive. I could calculate the minutes too, but you get my drift?
I went grocery shopping on Saturday morning, as normal. On most Saturday mornings we have a weekly treat of half a large croissant each with butter and Aileen’s wonderful home-made marmalade, the croissants ostensibly “fresh-baked” . In truth, they are never baked from scratch on-site. They are part-baked frozen pieces that have emerged hot and flaky from the oven that morning. However, all too often they have been baked the day before and no self-respecting Frenchman wold recognise them as edible, let alone a croissant. This week there were none at the bakery counter. So I decided that I’d try making my own and duly found a recipe that purports to be from the chefs of the SS France.
Now, it has to be said that it isn’t actually difficult to make a croissant. But it is a lengthy and involved process to say the least. Graham was quickly questioning the rationale behind the endeavour. However, I persisted – made the dough and parked it in the fridge alongside a sort of beurre manier concoction to cool. Meanwhile we retired to the yacht club where we devoured Sonia’s fabulous West-Indian oxtail for lunch.
When we returned from lunch I pulled the packages of dough and butter from the fridge to allow them to reach room-temperature, or a reasonable facsimile of room temperature in your average French boulangerie. When the two were more malleable they were rolled together in accordance with the recipe that I had obtained. The butter wasn’t soft enough, but by then I felt that had no choice but to keep going! I rolled and folded, and rolled and folded, and wrapped in damp tea-towels as instructed, and returned the whole bundle (now the size of a small pillow) to the fridge. Yesterday morning I once again removed the dough from the fridge, along with some pastry dough that I had made the night before. While everything rested I started a load of bread dough ……… no, I’m not feeding an army: I’m just being efficient about using the oven!
It felt like forever before I finally rolled out the croissant dough to the prescribed width, length and thickness, stripped away the uneven edges with a pizza cutter and consigned the triangles of the dough to the fridge for a further resting period. In the interim I made a quiche filling (alas, not a traditional Lorraine), knocked the bread dough down and shaped it for a standard 1lb tin loaf.
Eventually, the triangles of croissant dough were shaped into “second class” straight rolls – they were too tiny to try and shape into crescents -brushed with egg wash and left to prove (apparently on the SS France first class passengers received crescent-shaped croissants, while second class straight ones, as the bakers could fit more onto each baking sheet that way). They definitely doubled in size before they were committed to the oven in the final, not-quite-nail-biting, episode of this experiment. I couldn’t resist peeking occasionally as they rose yet more in the heat of the oven and tanned to a classic golden hue.
Croissants - our first attempt
At (long) last I pulled the sheets of tiny croissants from the oven and left them to cool on a baking rack, alongside the loaf of bread and quiche (spinach, onion & Stilton). The anticipation was now too much to bear. I loaded croissants onto side plates with a little butter and, for Graham, a smidgeon of Aileen’s marmalade and delivered them to the master-of-the-house for the taste test. Apparently, I passed, but they’re not flaky enough – yet. It took as long to make them as it does to fly trans-Atlantic, but it was much cheaper and a lot more satisfying. That said, I have a date with my favourite boulangerie on rue Victor Hugo for 2 croissants at 0700 on 30th July!
