Making your own Croissants may seem a little mad and they do take us two days (not whole days) to do, but Regan enjoys this variant on bread making, as they have a few more ingredients and she can also do some bashing with a rolling pin!

Whilst our recipe will surely be the same or at least similar to many croissant recipes, we’ve simplified the process to allow a 5 year old to follow.. I’m not trying to be patronising and of course the 5 year old will need supervision, guidance and help, except for with the bashing part, as I’m sure like Regan most will enjoy bashing!

Ingredients: 500g Strong white Flour; 10g Salt; 50g of Caster Sugar; 10g Yeast; 125ml of (lukewarm) Water; 125ml of cold milk; 1 Large Egg; 200g of Unsalted Butter.

Method: Add the Flour, the Salt and the Sugar to a mixing bowl and on a low setting allow these to mix in. Put the yeast into the lukewarm water and allow to bubble a little. Add the Cold milk and the egg in to the flour mix and allow to mix in, then add the water yeast mix.

This method is slightly different to others I’ve read, but it works well and in my mind means the yeast is activated, and not being killed or stunted by the salt or coldness of the milk and egg.

Let the croissant dough knead for around 8 mins, and then shape in to a ball, and put in a lightly flour bowl. Cover with a tea towel or in our case a see-through disposable shower cap and put in the fridge for at least 2 hours, or up to 24 hours. We do the first bit of this on a Saturday morning and the 2nd bit Saturday afternoon so we have Croissants for Sunday breakfast. It’ll all start to make sense soon…

Whilst the dough is slowly proofing in the fridge, we get the butter bit ready. If you take the 200g of butter straight from the fridge and put it either between two pieces of clingfilm or a split open freezer bag, then bash, bash, bash the butter with a rolling pin and roll it to around 1cm depth. Keeping it in between the clingfilm or freezer bag put back in the butter in the fridge again. Now you have time to tidy up and go for a Saturday morning walk whilst we wait for the next stage.

Once you’ve waited the 2 hours or more take the dough out of the fridge and gently roll it out in to a square shape, I say gentle as we don’t want to force all the air out but we do want to roll it out big enough for the butter to be added.

Take the butter from the fridge and gently place in the middle of the dough and fold the dough over to envelope the dough. Fold in half and again gentle roll out the croissant dough gently again, this time in to a rectangular shape. Cover again, we use the split freezer bag and put back in the fridge for around 30 minutes.

After 30 mins we taken the dough out of the fridge again and on a lightly floured surface roll it out gently lengthways and fold it in to thirds, and return to fridge for another 30 minutes.

We are going to do the above bit one more time… roll out, fold in to thirds and put back in the fridge for another 30 minutes. I know it seems a lot of faffing for something you can simply buy, but don’t underestimate the fun your 5 year old (or older) is having and they do taste very, very nice!

Now after the 30 minutes has past we take out the dough and roll out in to a rectangle 30cm x 75cm and around 4mm in thickness. With a sharpe knife trim the top, bottom and sides so you have a perfect rectangle. We then carefully, cut the rectangle lengthways and then cut each rectangle strip in to triangles. You want each triangle to have a bottom of 9cm and each side around 15cm, each an isosceles triangle. You’ll get 6-7 triangles from each strip, so 12-14 small(ish) croissants. Of course, the dough mix will be fine for bigger croissants, just remember to keep the triangles as isosceles.

Make a tiny cut on the bottom of each triangle (side b), this will help you get the shape, the cut should be around 2cm. Roll up each triangle from the bottom, pulling very gently to allow the spit you’ve made to open.. don’t be rough at this stage, you don’t want to crush the dough. If you do this bit right, it should un-roll pretty easily, not that you want to un-roll it.

Allow to prove for another 1-2 hours, this time at room temperature, covered with a tea towel. If we are going to freeze any, we freeze them at this point (see later).

Preheat the oven to 200C and glaze the finished croissants with egg wash. If you prepare the egg wash with a pinch of salt an hour before you use it, it works best we’ve found. Lots of bakers and chefs suggest this when doing an egg wash and it works well. Place on a greased baking tray, allow enough space for the croissants to rise.

Glaze again with the egg wash before putting in the oven for 15-20 minutes or until golden brown. Keep an eye on them baking, the time it takes does very much depend on your oven.

Cool on a wire rack. You can be a bit tidier than we are with the glazing, but don’t be too precious, remember this is cooking with a 5 year old.

Of course, you could do this final stage by getting up at silly o’clock for fresh Sunday morning croissants, but if you do them ahead on the Saturday they reheat in a warm oven in under 5 minutes. They also freeze well either at the pre-cooking stage or once made… we freeze before the final proof, but remember that takes longer in the morning, as they’ll need to defrost and then go through the final proof before baking.

You can add Almond Paste to these before you roll them, putting a blob of paste above the split you’ve made on side b of the triangle and top with flaked almonds and icing sugar before baking which I love! Or for a simple chocolate breakfast treat, cut the croissant dough in to squares and roll with a pieces of dark chocolate for a simple Pain au chocolat, which is a favourite with Regan’s Grandma.

As always, let me know how you get on…