I am impressed by the hotel’s croissants and danishes. And so I asked if the Executive Chef if there is a class we could attend. It is strange, he said, because most people ask for classes on Vietnamese food. Though he has no class on, he invited me to his kitchen and shared his recipes with my family.
The pastry chef then showed us how to make all the danishes and croissants and the soux chef gave us the recipes for the baguette and broiche. These are the best we can get in Southeast Asia. Really good.
The tips and recipe are provided by the chefs, and when we were there, the worked well. However, we are also aware these are not only experienced but also professionals. What seem so easy to them could take us a few times to master. But patience, practise and repetition is always the secret.
I also learn that there is only one kind of flour in Vietnam: plain flour. So everything is just made with plain flour.
Croissants from Chef Tsiapas
Ingredients
Pastry
- 1 kg Flour
- 200 g Butter
- 30 g Yeast
- 10 g Salt
- 120 g Sugar
- 1150 - 1180 g Water
Laminating butter
- 400 g-> hard Butter
Instructions
- Mix pastry together for 15 minutes and roll it to 1.5 cm. Refrigerate for 1 hour.
- Wag the hard butter with a rolling pin until it softens but still cold.
- Do a book fold for 4 times.
- Cut into 2 and chill for 1 hour.
- Roll out thinly to 4 mm and cut into triangles.
- After they are done, they can be frozen to be used when needed.
- To cook the croissant, first raise till they are double their sizes on an oiled baking pan.
- Brush with egg and water mixture.
- Bake at 180C oven until golden in color.
Here, our pastry chef shows you how to get the butter softened.
Butter is then wrapped into the pastry. It then gets rolled and folded three more times. The Chef shows us how the layers will look like if cut.
The pastry is then frozen for an hour and then rolled to 4mm thick, and cut into triangles. It is then rolled up into croissants.
She shows us how to roll them into croissants.
So here they are. They are frozen till just before service time, when they will be taken out to be proven and then baked.
