Croissants are on my “I would kill for a….” list. It’s one of the few things I haven’t been able to buy.  I’m on a mission to find a recipe that works. Rather than re-invent the wheel, I thought I would try some of the recipes that exist out there already. My first attempt is using a recipe from Baking with Collette.

I found the instructions to be a bit confusing. She refers to “body water” when she means to use warm water that is about at body temperature. I used Cup4Cup flour in my batch.

I do not have a “proofing bag” so I used the proof setting on my oven and put a big glass measuring cup of water on the bottom shelf to provide the moisture.

The recipe says to cut the dough into rectangles, but gives no size. So I basically sliced the dough into rows, the short way, then cut each row in half. One I set them on the baking sheet, I curved them into a crescent shape so they would look a bit like croissants. I did not use a filling in mine (Collette uses chocolate – I want to find a decent croissant first then I will work on fillings!).

When they came out of the oven, they were swimming in grease and the bottoms were very, very brown.

The verdict? These were good rolls, but did not equal croissants. There’s no flakiness, but they are moist and flavorful. They are like an egg bread. Everyone enjoyed it and I froze the leftovers which we will enjoy again sometime. I’m still searching for the perfect recipe though!