Rose Levy Beranbaum

A well-made croissant has a crisp crust and a somewhat flaky crumb that is soft but never doughy. Croissant is actually the missing link between puff pastry and brioche. Take puff pasty dough, add some yeast, and you have croissant dough. Take brioche dough, add as much as almost double the butter, replace the eggs with milk, and you have the makings of croissant dough. Some people think of a croissant as a pastry, others as a bread. Most don’t think much about it at all, they just eat it with great pleasure.

Since this recipe first appeared in The Pie and Pastry Bible, I have received countless e-mails from home bakers eager to make the dough but unable to find the “reduced-bran whole wheat” called for. I used that flour because it offers a sweet, slightly nutty flavor and beautiful golden color without the bitterness of heaviness of texture of 100 percent whole wheat flour. Reduced-bran flour, available commercially in large quantities, is simply whole wheat flour with most (98 percent) of its sweet, flavorful germ still in it but only 20 percent of its bran—just enough to add flavor intensity without bitterness. Once I investigated flour mill in depth, I realized that it’s a simple matter to add this amount of germ and bran back to white flour to make your own reduced-bran flour! This recipe makes it possible. In fact, since I am adding the coarse bran and germ separately, I incorporate them into the butter package. The butter coats their sharp edges and helps to keep them from cutting through the gluten network of the dough. Of course, if you prefer a traditional croissant, just omit the germ and bran.

Now that high-fat European-style butter is nationally available to home bakers, it makes it a lot easier to produce quality croissants. Because the butter is more pliable even when cold, it’s easier to roll the dough. I also find I pefer the lighter texture of a croissant dough made with less of this rich butter.

Classic croissants are given a total of four turns (business letter folds). But if the butter starts breaking through the dough, it’s fine to stop after three turns; you will still have plenty of flaky layers. The fact that the butter breaks through the dough layers is what makes the croissant so much more tender than puff pastry where the butter layers remain perfectly moist.
   
Rectangles of Wheaten Croissant dough wrapped around small rectangles of bittersweet chocolate make a delectable variation on the traditional white-flour pains au chocolat. They are most delicious when eaten still warm from the oven when the chocolate is still slightly melted. Of course, they can be reheated to achieve this same effect.

Use your favorite bittersweet chocolate. I prefer a milder chocolate, not one that is too bittersweet, as it would contrast too sharply with the dough. Click for recipe