Love and Olive Oil

March Kitchen Challenge: Croissants

Kitchen Challenge March 2013It’s easy to stay in your comfort zone, as is true of many areas of life, including in the kitchen. It’s easy to think that trying new and difficult things is setting yourself up for failure. It’s easy to stick with what you know and increase your chances of success.

But sometimes the easy way is not the most rewarding.

I’ve decided I need to force myself out of my bubble, make myself tackle things that have intimidated me for years.

Scary, complex, temperamental recipes: I’m going to face them head on.

And I’m going to document it all right here, failures and all.

First up: CROISSANTS. I think I’ll follow the thorough instructions from Cooks Illustrated, which you can view here.

The Challenges:
– Finding the right butter. European style. Hello $$$. Better start saving my pennies now.
– Finding the time. CI says good croissants take about 10 hours from start to finish.
– Finding the muscles. I guess making croissants could basically be called an arm workout, right? I’ll take that over the gym any day.
– Finding the chocolate. Because you know I won’t be satisfied with just plain croissants. Or, ooh! Almond!

Who’s with me?

If you’re up for the challenge, whip up some croissants of your own by March 20th. Send me a photo if you want to. I’ll document my experience and also share the images/links to those who’ve taken the challenge as well. If it goes well we’ll make it a monthly thing.

Let’s do this!

Tell me, what else is on your culinary bucket list that you’ve been too timid to tackle?

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59 Comments

  1. I wish I had paid attention to this sooner! I’ll have to keep an eye out for next month’s challenge. I’ve never made croissants from scratch before, and it definitely intimidates me. But I bet it’s worth it!

  2. Hi Lindsey

    My friend and I accepted your challenge and made croissants this weekend. It took a VERY long time to make the dough, but they turned out great! Even my dad gave them a thumbs up (and he is a hard man to please when it comes to desserts!). I thought they would crash and burn since that is what usually happens when I attempt a new type of dough for the first time, but surprisingly enough it all worked out great!!!

    I took some photos of our successful croissants but I don’t know how to send them to you….

    I can’t wait until the next challenge!!! The future challenges I have for myself are eclairs and macarons.

    Thanks so much for all of your recipes the look amazing,
    Clara

  3. Great challenge idea. I had the same thought and then came across your blog!

    Here are the results. I used a recipe from Peter Reinhart’s _Artisan Bread Every Day_. Came out great!

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/troyderego/8556240367/in/photostream

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/troyderego/8556240367/in/photostream

  4. I made it a few weeks ago. I have to confess that the most difficult and time consuming it was to make the dough. But it also did plenty of “ynhumy” croissants. :P

    You can see them here:

    http://sweetaffair.pt/post/44559789656/croissants-feitinhos-em-casa-more-a

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