Day 16: The One with the Lamination

Happy monday and welcome back to another week of my pastry journey! Today began our two day viennoiserie class with Jamie Heffey. We started the day by getting our crossiant dough made so that it could rest before we made all of the different pastries. I have included below everything that is getting made out of the ~5 kilos of dough we have.

Croissant	Almond Croissant
Ham & Cheese Croissant	Twice Baked Hazelnut Pain Au Chocolat
Pain Au Chocolat	Cereal Milk Cruffin
Dubai Chocolate Danish	Banoffee Danish
Blueberry Muffin Pain Suisse	Peanut Butter & Jelly Churro

Jamie split the 4.25 kilos of dough into four large balls and one small ball that will be used as a topper. While the dough rested on the counter for an hour we used the sheeter to laminate the butter and get it 6mm in height all around. The butter was then put in the refrigerator to chill to 9 degrees celsius.

Jamie had made some ham and cheese croissants that were placed in the proofer before we arrived this morning. He egg washed the croissants and sprinkled with everything bagel seasoning. These were then baked and then eaten quickly as they were too delicious not too.

We then moved onto the fillings that needed to be placed in the croissants before proofing. This included a creme fresh pastry cream, blueberry jam, and muffin cake for the blueberry muffin pain suisse. I have never seen a croissant filled with cake but I am excited to see how it turns out. We also made the frangipane’s for the almond and hazelnut pastries as well as the peanut frangipane for the peanut butter and jelly churro.

After the dough had set on the counter for an hour and in the fridge for about 4 hours, we started on lamination. Jamie does a double fold lamination for all of his pastries to get the flakiest dough, this take two full book folds. Once the dough was big enough to hold the laminated butter the butter was placed in the dough and folded in. When using the laminator we started at 15mm and worked our way down to 6mm in 2mm increments. This takes a lot of practice and memorization but with some youtube videos and pictures anyone can you a lamination machine.

Once all of the dough was laminated we cross laminated for the pain suisse and the churro style dough. To cross laminate, the dough was cut in 6mm strips and then placed on the non-cut dough with the lamination side on the top and bottom of the dough. This gave a stripey look to the dough and allows for a visual representation of the layers. The blueberry pastry was filled with the cake and two fillings and then folded, the churro was filled with the peanut butter filling and rolled like a churro.

Next we moved onto the rest of the viennoiserie by cutting out the danish’s, rolling the pain au chocolate’s and croissants, and rolling the cruffins. The cruffins are baked in metal rings vertically to create that muffin affect out of croissant dough. All of the pastries were placed on parchment lined sheets and put in the freezer. These will all be placed in the proofer tonight and the proofing process will be started around midnight using a timer. Tomorrow Jamie will explain the entire proofing process and we will bake all the croissants.

With some of the leftover dough we made brioche buns to show how to use the excess waste. Jamie combined dough, sugar, salt, flour, and eggs in a mixer to make a brioche dough. This was then balled into 3g balls and placed in rings, this will also be proofed and baked tomorrow.

Tomorrow we will egg wash all of the pastries and baked them and then fill the ones that need to be filled. If you are ever in Liverpool England check out Jamie’s bakery Pastille for amazing croissants and danishes!