Croissant, mon amour

Baking Croissants with Pierre Reboul

Hi Pierre,

Hope you had a lovely time in Istanbul and Paris. I don’t know if you remember but a while ago we talked about my magazine and that I would love to bake croissants with you for a story. Would that be possible in March? Make them together from start to finish? The extra buttery version? I’ll be back in Vienna on the 7th of March. Let me know what you think.

Best from Barcelona,

Tobias.

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Hi Tobias,

Sure no problem.

We would need two days, pick a date!

Enjoy Barcelona,

Pierre.

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How long do we need on each day?

Are there any days that are better for you? Or do you not care at all?

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First day 3 hours,

Second days 10 hours,

Third day (day of baking) 3 hours,

I forgot this one!!!

Any days are good.

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Jesus! 4th to the 6th of April?

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Good things take time!!!

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Reserved for the chosen few is the pleasure of eating butter in large quantities. Resourceful bakers in late nineteenth century France hit upon a way to transform butter into a crunchy bite, enabling it to be consumed in previously unthought of quantities: the croissant.

Croissants accomplish the miracle of transforming cumbersome, thick butter into a delicious airy cloud — the croissant is levitating butter. If butter is the best fat in the world, then a fresh croissant is the best pastry in the world. And Pierre Reboul’s croissants are the very best of the best pastries in the world. His legendary hand-rolled croissants contain almost four kilos of butter to every five kilos of flour.

Reboul was, for a long time, the Chef Patissier in Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s world-wide restaurant empire; in the 2000s he became Chef Patissier at the Cafe Central in Vienna. Back then I worked in an office less than 100m from the Cafe Central. Every day I grabbed myself at least one of Pierre’s croissants — after lunch at the butcher’s around the corner. I put on ten kilos (but I’m sure the butcher was responsible) and after the office moved buildings I lost not only the weight, but also the croissants. The latter was a tragic loss.

I met Pierre again a couple of years later and he kind enough to show me how to bake the original, full fat version. Before we start: Here are a few things he told me:

“Croissants make me happy, in their own very special way. It’s like meeting an old friend, one you don’t have to say too much to. You understand each other instinctively.

The ingredients are very standard, same as a bread roll. The difference is the way they’re worked. When you’re working with the dough, try to be like an African mama: precise but gentle. You can’t fuck around and you have to know what you want, otherwise it won’t behave.

When I first came to Austria I worked in Salzburg. I didn’t like it at all. One day the younger Wlaschek (son of Karl Wlaschek, founder of Billa) called and said he was looking for someone for the Cafe Central and asked whether I might like to come to Vienna for a chat. So I packed a cake and some croissants and went to the city.

In Vienna both of the Wlascheks received me, father and son, and the older one was crazy about the croissant. He said, “We have to have these,” and asked when I could start. I thought about it a little and acted a little coy. Then he handed me an envelope and said, “That, is for you. I don’t want any promises from you. You just have to come to Vienna and have a look for yourself.” That was an offer I couldn’t refuse. So I went to the Central, and there I made my best croissants.

We had a lot of time there, and very good butter. Good butter is probably the most important thing. You need butter that tastes good and is elastic, that lets you roll it out, without smearing, and that doesn’t break as soon as you knock on it. With cultured butter you get more flavour. For patissiers there’s a special butter, Tournier Butter, that contains less water and has been melted and crystallised twice, but normal butter is good enough. When you’re standing in the supermarket and have to decide, press the butter and take the one that feels nice and hard. Lescure from Normandy is very good, but NÖM is also fine.

Temperature is often a problem. When I was working for Jean-George Vongerichten, we opened a place in the Bahamas. The architects designed a totally fancy kitchen, but they didn’t take care and didn’t build space for us to cool the marble bench. We had to work very, very quickly with ventilators and frozen pans. While the butter is being worked, the working surface simply has to be cold, at best not more than 15 degrees. In Austria that’s not a problem most of the year. Just open the window.

Often margarine is used when making croissants because it’s very elastic. I’m not a food snob, but for family reasons I can’t swallow the things. In summer as kids we spent at least a month with the grandparents. My grandfather was a policeman and my grandmother was the one who taught us manners. They weren’t rich, but they never ever bought margarine. “Margarine is common,” my grandfather would always say. Every Saturday and Sunday we bought croissants. If my grandmother got one that had been made with margarine she’d pull a face and wail, “Wah, wah, wah, it sticks to the gums, you can’t get that stuff down.” This left an indelible mark upon me.”

Recipe for Pierre’s Croissants

For many trays of croissants you need:

5kg flour, Type 480

125g salt

880g sugar

150g inverted sugar syrup

150g yeast

300g eggs

2.4kg milk

500g butter for the dough

325g butter for further preparation

Day 1:

Mix the flour, yeast and milk into a rough dough and let it sit at 4 degrees for at least an hour. (If you have enough time, you can start this step the previous evening — it gives the dough more time to ferment which means more flavour and crunchiness later on.) Mix your pre-dough with the eggs, the butter for the dough, and sugar for ten minutes in a mixer all the way through and leave it alone for another hour.

Roll the dough into a rectangle, fold it once, press it flat and cool it quickly in the cold storage room to just under 0 degrees. The idea is to stop any yeast action. Let it sit for an hour.

Now it’s important to work in a cold room. Your butter and your dough shouldn’t ever get warmer than 27 degrees. Halve your cold butter and shape both pieces into the same form as your dough: Pierre bangs it flat and rectangular with his fist and some kind of primordial power.

Roll your dough into rectangular form three times its original length. Lay the first piece of butter on the middle third of the dough, fold the right-hand third over it, lay your second piece of butter on top of that, and now fold the left-hand third over the top. You should now have a rectangle made out three layers of dough each separated by a layer of butter. Let the dough rest overnight at 0 degrees.

Day 2:

Roll your dough out to three times its own length and fold it in three layers back into its original form. Let it rest for an hour and then repeat the procedure another three times. The idea behind this is that the layers of butter stop the dough from sticking together — when the croissants get baked, the dough rises into twelve crunchy layers. After the fourth and final rolling-out, smear a handful of room-temperature, not-too-warm butter over the top of the dough. That gives the croissants an ‘extra butter burst’ as Pierre calls it. Fold and let it rest one more time for an hour at just over 0.

Roll out your dough to about 5 millimetres thick and cut it into triangles. Be amazed by the layers that remind one of geological formations. One triangle should weigh about 90g. Lay the triangle in such a way that the tip points toward you. Make a little cut in the middle of the longest side, pull the two corners of the longest side slightly away from each other and then roll them up, towards the tip. Repeat with all of your triangles and pack them into the cold storage room at 4 degrees and leave them overnight.

Day 3:

Four hours before you want to bake, take your croissants out of the cold storage room and brush with mixed egg. Leave them in a warm place with good ventilation at about 26 degrees and after about four hours brush them with another layer of egg. Then put them in the oven at 180 degrees for 17–20 minutes. Be very careful when baking: if the baking time is too short and the oven too hot, they can get chewy.

Take them out and wait until they’ve cooled enough so as not to burn your mouth. Stuff a hot croissant in your mouth and enjoy the butter taste explosion and the crunchy, levitating, light dough. If you’ve made everything right, your croissant will crackle like dry autumn leaves underfoot. Pierre eats his croissants with two, maximum three bites, and likes to eat two in a row.

This story is from All You Can Eat #1, the fat issue. You can order the magazine via www.allyoucaneatmagazine.com.

Text & photos: Tobias Müller