Chocolate Croissants (Cédric Grolet)

First recipe from the latest book by Cédric Grolet, Opéra, the one for chocolate croissants. It is obviously the same recipe for croissants, you can adapt it to the pastries of your choice. Regarding quantities, I think the number of croissants indicated in the book is underestimated; making 6 as noted gave me very large croissants that struggled to finish baking, so I give you my advice in the recipe for cutting your pastries. Last thing, I'm often asked how to have fresh pastries for breakfast, so if like me you don't particularly like getting up at 5 am to prepare breakfast, you can bake them in the evening, wrap them, and put them in the hot oven for 2 minutes when you want to enjoy them, they will be crispy and hot again without having to get up at dawn ;-)

Preparation time: 30 minutes + 3 hours resting + 15 minutes baking
For about ten chocolate croissants:

Ingredients:

500g Type 45 flour

210g water

25g whole egg

50g granulated sugar

23g fresh yeast

9g salt

10g honey

35g butter

200g rolling butter

Chocolate bars (2 to 3 per croissant, I used 2 but the recipe indicated 3)

Egg yolks QS + a little liquid cream for the glaze

Recipe:

In the bowl of a mixer fitted with a hook, place the flour, water, egg, yeast, salt, sugar, and honey.

Mix on first speed until you have a homogeneous dough, then on second speed until the dough separates from the sides of the bowl.

Add the butter, then mix again on speed 2 to have a homogeneous dough.

Cover the dough with a slightly damp cloth, then let it rise for 1 hour at room temperature.

After resting, degas the dough and roll it out into a rectangle shape.

Film it in contact, then place it in the freezer for 5 minutes and in the refrigerator for 15 minutes. When putting the dough mixture in the refrigerator, work on the rolling butter. Tap it with a rolling pin to make it elastic without heating it, then roll it out in parchment paper into a rectangle of the same height and half the width of the dough mixture.

Put the butter in the fridge with the dough mixture so that they have the same temperature.

Then, place the butter in the center of the dough mixture and fold it to enclose the butter (by pressing tightly on the butter to avoid air bubbles).

Roll out the dough to obtain a large rectangle about 50cm long.

Fold a small portion of the dough upwards, then fold the top of the dough downwards so that the two meet.

Fold the dough in half again.

You've now completed a double turn. Wrap the dough and chill for 10 minutes.

Place the dough so that the fold is on the right, like a book.

Roll it out again into a rectangle a little less long than the first time, then fold the dough into three to make a single turn.

Roll out the dough to 3 to 4mm thick. According to the recipe, with this amount of dough you can make 6 chocolate croissants, which I tried to do, but this way the croissants were too large and struggled to bake. I advise you to roll it out carefully, paying attention to the thickness (no more than 4mm) and to get a rectangle of at least 40cm x 30 or 35cm, you will have enough to make at least 8 to 10 chocolate croissants.

Cut into 7x20cm rectangles (to get a nice puff pastry, cut the dough in one stroke with a sharp knife, without tearing it). Place a chocolate bar on the edge, roll the dough to cover the chocolate, place a second chocolate bar, roll again and place a third bar. Finish rolling the chocolate croissants, then place them on a tray.