Is there any thing better than croissant? Je crois que non! But there is, in my opinion, an improvement on the original recipe for the quintessential French pastry, and that is to use sourdough as the leavening agent.
Patience may be a virtue, but it is an absolute necessity here. I’ve written before about the process for making sourdough. For the sourdough croissant recipe, it is simple, but requires a few critical steps.
Once you have the dough, you simply need to laminate the butter. To do that, you need to create a very thin sheet of butter. Make sure the butter is pliable, but still cool enough that it has structure. Using two sheets of either wax paper or parchment paper, you roll this butter into a very thin sheet, about the width and length of a cookie sheet, and as thin as you can get it (perhaps 1/16th of an inch (1.5 mm). Then, roll out your dough to the same dimensions but approximately 1 inch (2.54 cm) thick.
The lamination process comes from simply folding the dough and butter as the recipe explains. As noted, it is not difficult; it just requires a number of steps and time in between.
But, the end result is more than worth it, as the tanginess of the sourdough counters the sweetness of the butter, all in a flaky, delectable treat!
Sherry & George 