I Tested the 2 DAY Chocolate Croissants – Viral Babish Recipes Tested
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The first time I made croissants I think…either last year or 2020, they came out exactly like this. Literally identical. They were ok I think but not worth the trouble. I just thought it was supposed to be like that.
Yeast should rise between 70-75 degrees F. Having it rise for an extended period of time in 80+ degree weather most likely killed it. Keep trying!
try Claire's recipe.
I don’t know, whether you made so many mistakes without realizing it, or you just wanted to be true to the recipe to test it out.
I cried out a little when you threw that first batch away. I hate food waste and this could’ve been avoided. When your dough is too wet, you add flour (duh). Period. Every flour is different. I, for example, can’t get any of these types and brands of flour you Americans are using, so I can’t follow any recipes exactly. You just have to feel the dough and see what it needs.
If your yeast wasn’t dead, it will proof, you just have to give it time. When It’s not ready, It’s not ready. What If a recipe states, that your should cook your tough cut of meat for one hour, but It’s still not tender? Will you eat it anyway? Will you throw it out, because the recipe said it should be done?
You make cooking videos rating other people recipes, I get that. But I think it would be nice for you to try to understand the processes and basics of food science to get an idea, what is wrong and How it can be improved. Cooking should not be an exact science. Pastries usually are, but there are some points where you should be able to safely say – this is not how It’s supposed to look like, let’s do something about it. You have a great following and I think, that you should encourage more people (and yourself!) to not follow recipes blindly. Once you realize, that you don’t need recipes, that’s when the fun begins.
try using the King Arthur flour recipe. it has always worked for me.
Humidity, high salt, the over saturated butter all of these and more may have affected your dough. Personally one trick I do so you have ribbons of chocolate runing thru the croissants is to cream the butter with dark chocolate before folding into the dough. Also taking the finished product and placing them into a casserole dish pouring custard sauce aka egg milk and vanilla over top then baking makes a lovely brunch dish with mimosas btw 😏
If you add the salt in before the yeast has a chance to work, they will not rise. If you just add the yeast, milk and sugar first and let stand till foamy then you should add the rest of your ingredients! Salt tends to kill yeast
i would not have used pastry flour, it's fine if too much gluten formed in a test batch but you had far too little
humidity is a b that turns any measurement into a suggestion and i think the salt or milk took out your yeast
For this kind of recipe you usually want the cheaper chocolat because it gets hard rather than runny when it melts.
The dough got probably warm very fast because of the surface temperature of your kneeding/rolling surface.
I’m just here to start drama (Jkjk) but I’ve tried a few Babish recipes and the measurements are almost never quite right. Not sure what’s up with that, but just my experience
I cannot stop laughing – you are such a good sport! HAHAHAHA
dave these looked beautiful don't be too hard on yourself. remove the milk from the dough, it will fix your issues.
Milk isn't much of a standard ingredient since it varies a lot from one place, and one brand, to another. Generally try to avoid it
Great video as usual. I love your never say die attitude.
I'm not sure what was going on with your dough. This YouTuber Chainbaker has completely changed how I view baking.
Looking forward to the next video!
I think the answer to why the recipe didn't seem right is exactly what you said at the beginning of the video. French cooking skills. You should try to use a recipe from an actual french chef and I would suggest you try Cyril Lignac or even better, Cedric Grolet. Their recipes can be easily found in the net and they are super precise and professional.
It doesn’t matter if the yeast is risen in water or milk. The recipe itself was completely off. You combined a pastry and bread flour. It’s not not going to work. Just use a pastry recipe and it should work. A bread dough would not taste good.
Do you keep your yeast in the freezer? if you do, you need to bring your recipe amount of yeast to room temp before adding it to warm liquid… otherwise you risk shattering the cells and killing it… think Alien 3.
I love this. It's so refreshing to get an honest review of a recipe, instead of a video trying to convince us how "easy" it is!
Not sure what went wrong but I’d love to see you try the making the viral Lafayette croissants
If you added additional flour, did you additional yeast? Perhaps ration of flour to yeast is off when extra flour is added
It's your flour, you definitely need a strong bread flour 🙂 with a strong flour, the gluten you develop when mixing the dough will be able to retain the gas produced by the yeast. If you have a low gluten flour then there will be minimal development and the gas won't be retained = low rise during proof and bake. You may also see tears in your laminations because the dough's elasticity isn't good enough because of the low gluten in the flour. Hope this helps? Love your vids, keep on baking!
Hi David. I just sent you a message on IG regarding this video and offering to provide some helpful tip, tricks, and a better recipe. I hope it reaches you (:
what i european style butter?! As a European this confused the heck out of me
Bread flour, less salt, colder rolling (no melted butter between layers allowed) start yeast in water with some sugar.
Temperature all day. Your temps were off so the dough collapsed and the butter melted
The reason croissant and pain au chocolat have different names is that pains au CHOCOLAT contain… chocolat whereas croissant don't 😬
Whole wheat pastry flour?
Babish called for pastry flour, and you used whole wheat pastry flour….that’s definitely part of the problem here. He also called for active dry yeast, not instant, and I would check your yeast by proofing some in warm water.
Usually it's easier to incubate in low temp but longer time, mb the yeast overheated
These "X-hour" viral recipe videos are annoying. It's like they are showing off their food security privilege.
especially Alvin.
a couple of comments: 1) at 4:15 you can see the butter is not evenly distributed. I've only made puff pastry from scratch one time, so I don't claim to be an expert, but this error is very visible. it looks like you were only making your tri-folds one way and not rotating 90 degrees each rollout. 2) the pastry chef who taught me to make puff pastry said flour is weird in that if it's humid, it takes more water to hydrate the flour properly and less water when it's dryer. The complete opposite of what your expectations should be. Also, we used a combo of cake and A/P flour, so very low gluten and put the butter in the freezer to start so it was extremely cold.
Babish sold out. His recipes aren't what they used to be. He used to loving crank out great recipes with quirky nods to movies, TV, etc.
Now he just cranks them out as fast as he can. I miss the old babish.
Heya David!
French viewer here
No sane person would try any croissant/pain au chocolat/chocolate croissant recipe, as it's really hard
You did follow everything perfectly, and the result does seem delicious still
Keep on the awesome work!!
you should try claire's croissant recipe, i tried it a few months ago and they came almost perfect on my first try
I try to maintain an indoor temp of 70 degrees F. Your area might've been warmer. I actually have a list or whatever of things I look to maintain while rolling the dough. I wanna say its based on 10 attempts at puff pastry and 4 attempts at croissants. Still working on croissants. This is the recipe I follow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=An42SMUUpt4&t=98s
1. Butter and dough must be same consistency.
2. Apply gentle pressure when rolling.
3. Trim edges to square it during lamination.
4. Wait until butter is malleable before rolling.
5. Maintain Indoor temperature of, at most, 72F.
6. Keep dough flat before laminating.
7. Keep dough cold at all costs.
Dough recipe:
Dry:
1. 500g ap flour
2. 12g instant yeast
3. 50g sugar
4. 12g salt
Wet:
4. 100g crumpled unsalted butter
5. 250g water at 53F
"Butter slab":
1. 250g unsalted butter
edit: Have fun
My best guesses as a baker are that there was too much salt in the dough and the milk wasn't warm enough, and there could have been too little sugar in the dough. Salt slows the yeast down and instant yeast needs more sugar to activate. To help you with the rolling, the dough and butter should be about the same consistency. The butter should be slightly soft and not super cold, other wise it won't roll. Hope this helps! ☺
I’ve never used pastry flour when making croissants, always straight bread flour, King Arthur brand specifically. Maybe the flour was the issue. I use Paul Hollywood’s recipe, and it’s never failed me.
ayoooo como un bebé as background music 🔥
Hi David, did you happen to check if the scale was in grams or if you didn't forget to take the weight off the bowls you used?
I just really like all of your videos. Thank you for creating these wonderful videos
This is why I'm scared to make croissants
ANY croissants
Love you and your channel
I know you said you keep your house cold, but it’s summer and humid AF. The humidity killed it. You may have needed more flour but also needed to add more yeast. Be brave and try it again in the fall or spring. I love your channel and am bummed it didn’t work out. But that is the risk of that kind of pastry in the summer.
The hydration of this dough is ridiculous for a croissant. It's 288g (180+108) of flour to 240g of milk. An 84% hydration is far too high for a croissant that's why it's not working.
I can't find a written recipe, but even if what he's saying is 180g+180g flour that's still 67% hydration, still faaaaar to high for this kind of dough.
Croissants have a 50-55% hydration. Thats your issue.
Also if the dough isn't kneaded properly, for example, a sloppy dough that doesn't come together, it means the gluten hasn't properly formed, therefore your dough will not be able to trap in the gases released from the yeast, explaining why your yeast is fine but your dough isn't rising.
Hope this helps x
Hi! I'm not an expert, but I could say that too much salt and too much fat might create some problems to the yeast!
I actually think that the only problem was when you let you your dough rise in such a hot environment because the temperature is crucial.and that's why you might have killed the yeast even though they were activated…