One of my big baking goals for years was to create homemade croissants. When I finally tackled that project, the results were fantastic, but I just couldn't see going through all that work and all those bajillion hours of cooling and folding on a regular basis, especially when I'm so often just using them as an ingredient in another recipe.
So when I wanted to make a dish that called for cut-up croissants as an ingredient, I decided to see how well I could create those buttery rolls in my bread machine.
The results were just what I was looking for. Croissant-enough for a recipe (the results are honestly not comparable to the real deal, if you're looking for stand-alone rolls), but also incredibly easy and tasty and these can definitely do the trick with just about any "crescent rolls" recipe you might have.
What You Need:
1 cup warmed milk (I used almond & heated it just 10 seconds in the microwave)
1/2 cup cold cubed butter
2 eggs
1/2 cup honey
4 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 Tablespoon yeast
What You Do:
1. Dump everything into your bread machine (this is my awesome new one!)
and set it to the dough cycle. Hit "start" and walk away (I love that part!)2. When the dough cycle has finished, take the dough out. Do NOT leave the croissant dough sitting in your bread machine until later. It will continue to rise and expand and fill every single crevice of your machine's innards, making it nearly impossible to clean and probably break it and thus cause you to get a new one.
Ask me how I know.
3. Pull the dough into 3 sections, then roll each section out onto a well-floured surface. (I had to add quite a bit of flour and mush it all in before I started rolling the dough out. Not a big deal, just good to know that it's okay if this happens to you.)
4. Cut the dough section in half lengthwise & crosswise (a pizza cutter works well for this - check out the crazy-good deal on this one! ) and then divide each rectangle into two triangles.
5. Roll each triangle, starting with the base and ending with the point to make your croissant.
6. Place on baking sheet and bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes. You can flip them over halfway if you want, but I'm lazy and just let them be.
Have you ever made croissants the real way from scratch? Do you like the idea of having a version you can make that's just about as easy as popping open a tube of crescent rolls from the grocery store, but without all the junk inside? Then you should try this bread machine recipe! Let me know what you think - leave a comment or email me at lisahealy (at) outlook (dot) com.
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