the first time i feel

this is the croissant project that spanned over three days last weekend. the last time i made it, i did very badly at the lamination, and that resulted in very few layers in the final product. you can see blocks of butter still, even after three double turns. (the recipe calls for just two double turns.) this time i waited for the butter to soften each time before rolling the dough.
the first night i made the butter square. i used lurpak, which was so expensive, so i wanted to do right by it. and so instead of haphazardly whacking the block into a square, i placed them in the right sized pan and whacked them to exacting measurements.
after making the milk dough and chilling it, the butter square was wrapped into the dough. then i slowly tapped the block until the butter inside was softened, then rolled it out big enough to do a double turn. a double turn just means folding the big square in thirds into a rectangle, then folding the rectangle in thirds into a square again. this creates the dough-butter-dough-butter-etc... structure within the dough. after the first double turn there'll be nine butter layers inside.
wrapped tightly in clingfilm and chilled for two hours, the dough expanded against the plastic and became a tight block again. then i tapped the block again until the butter softened, and i rolled again. this time, the dough started tearing a little, and some butter came out, but i patched it up by dusting with more flour over the tears. after another double turn, the number of butter layers inside increases to eighty-one!
you can see how puffy and strongly the dough pushed against the clingfilm. it was almost cute! then i did the finaly rolling. this one really stretched the dough very thin, and it tore at many places, which was why i had to keep dusting with flour. alas, after chopping up the dough to shape the croissants, the inside was revealed. i think you can see the dough-butter-dough-butter-etc... layers inside. it's amazing how when you've rolled the dough to such a thinness and cut through it, that the butter doesn't just gush out. it stays in between the dough layers.
the last time i made the croissants, didn't think i would want to go through all the trouble of laminating the dough again, but i still did. now, i think: if i really do laminate croissant dough again, i'm not going to attempt croissant shapes anymore. i'm just not able to make the 牛角 shapes. so, i'll be happy to just place some small pieces of chocolate on rectangles of dough and simply roll them up to form pains au chocolat.
brushed with egg wash, the croissants were ready for the oven. as before, they leaked a lot of butter onto the baking sheet, and the bottoms became fried bread. (is this supposed to happen?)
the finished products! you can definitely see many more layers - and thinner layers - compared to these:
, which were made the last time. however, though there were a lot more layers, the bread came out a bit tough. i think i added too much flour during the second rolling process. that said, it doesn't matter (to me) because i love the taste/smell of the lurpak butter so much. and with chocolate in the pain au chocolat, it's delicious.

and this is my home-made version of a bakerzin dessert i made just now, but i've given it a much longer name: chocolate soufflé with madagascar bourbon vanilla ice cream.
i was taking a risk, because the soufflé batter was already six days old. and true enough, it didn't turn out all that perfect. one soufflé bubbled over and just kept leaking. the other didn't rise completely because some part was stuck to the rim of the ramekin.
plating the dessert! this is the first time i bothered to dust a soufflé with icing sugar. and it really completes the whole thing. the ice cream tempers the hot soufflé, so you don't have to be afraid of burning your tongue when you eat the soufflé. and i'm still mesmerised by the dots in the vanilla ice cream. it's almost sublime.