New Mum’s Food Adventures

Many things surprised me. I was not expecting to get anything even close to working out. I was too cautious with the proofing. It had a bit of a jiggle but I could have gone further. I was very worried about over proofing.

I cut the mini one and a medium one even though they were hot. One had a lovely air pocket and the other had nice spirals to it. Next time I will add some tapioca flour. They were very soft and fluffy with a good amount of moisture. Mine definitely needed some more butter. I went too light with the butter but I was using nuttelex butter. And yet it worked.

The croissant flavour was there. But it could have been stronger. Next time more buttermilk and more butter.

Rolling them was interesting because I kept the dough fairly wet. I gave it as much hydration as I could get away with. I also added in the xanthum late but it seemed to work out just fine.

I stirred my dough until it unstuck from the spoon but was still sticky to the touch. It’s very hard to describe but it basically while mixing with a spoon was difficult to stir and looked a lot like sourdough. It was very much a going by feeling. It was too wet to touch so I added flour all over to be able to touch it and flopped it around. Divided it into about 8 balls and used my hands to flatten the balls into flat round pieces. Buttered the pieces and layered them in a pancake stack with butter in each layer then used a rolling pin to roll the stack out to get my layers. Cut the croissant triangles rolled them up and put in the oven which was off with a bowl of hot water to steam proof. About 40 minutes they were proofed to a point where u wasn’t confident in proofing further. I know now that I could have proofed some more.

I added an egg wash and baked on 200 Celsius until browned. It was just under 20 minutes.

I don’t have very accurate ingredients because it is still an experiment but trying a non traditional method that would work.

Gluten free does not have a gluten structure to build with so it’s hard to get a croissant with that pastry texture with gluten free even using starches and binders. Too much fat even if you chill the pastry can make a weird melted grainy lump with gluten free flour or it can go the opposite way. Too little fat makes little pastry rocks.

What I chose to use was YesYouCan plain gluten free flour, potato starch, one egg, sugar and yeast and some xanthum gum with buttermilk milk and some water. Next time I will use all buttermilk and add tapioca and use a better quality unsalted butter. I measured everything up until the water. A lot of this had to be guessed and felt. Also the humidity in my kitchen played a roll as well. I did find the dough needed a half hour rest before using because of the binders.

The next time I try this, I will take an accurate record and share the recipe.

The best part about this batch was the butter and buttermilk gave a good croissant flavour. The outside had a lovely thin crispy crunchy crust. It needed the egg wash and I am glad I didn’t forget to put it on. It wasn’t flakey but it had a pastry feel to it. It was rather pleasant. After cooling it remained crispy and did not go soggy which was a plus. but working with a high hydration was extremely important to the overall outcome.

So my next step from here is to document my process thoroughly and share a recipe. Preferably a working recipe.