Croissant Class

Yesterday I took a Croissant class at Sur La Table in Kirkland. It was my first time taking a class at SLT - so I wasn't really sure what to expect. But it was a great class, very hands-on, and I definitely will be looking at taking more classes in the future (like their Chocolate Workshop coming up in a few weeks). Rachel, the instructor, was fabulous. She is a certified pastry chef who studied at the French Culinary Institute in New York and is just cute as a button.

What I learned - making croissants from scratch is very LONG process. Although, to be fair, you are not actively cooking during this whole time (the dough has a lot of resting time). But from start to finish, you are looking at 10-11 hours. Which I'm still trying to figure out how you would time that so that you have fresh croissants in the morning. Anyways, Rachel taught us 4 types of croissants - plain, ham & cheese, pain au chocolate, and morning buns. All super simple to make once you have the actual croissant dough made and ready. And they were delicious! So although the process is long, the end result is well worth it. Here's a picture of the finished ham & cheese croissants.



And here is a picture of the finished pain au chocolate croissants.



We got to bring home some dough to finish our own batch of croissants. I finished my third turn, but it got late for me to roll out the dough and make the croissants. So I popped the dough in the freezer (which is very cool that you can do that - helps break up that long process time), and will have to wait until next weekend to make my actual croissants. I was a little bummed about that because I would have loved to have a ham & cheese croissant for breakfast this morning. But what is a girl to do. There are only so many hours in a day. Have a great Monday!