This week-end, I spent time with some of my friends in Brittany. We spent the whole week-end there, mostly to disconnect from our everyday life. On Saturday, we went to La Gacilly for a picnic and a walk. La Gacilly is an artist village located just here. It’s a really cute and beautiful place with old houses, tiny streets, lots of flowers and artists all around. This village is also famous for its photography expositions. Huge portraits were hanging on the walls of the houses in the main streets. There were also many shops owned by craftsmen.

I really enjoyed this place. We were lucky to have a hot and sunny day, which made our time there even better. I took some pictures and wanted to share them with you. For this week-end, I also baked some chokladbiskvier (I am literally incapable of pronouncing that name, even though I wished :’(. I posted a picture of them on my instagram account and luckily, David Frenkiel from GK Stories replied!), some Swedish cakes which I discovered on Green kitchen stories blog.

I tried an alternative filling using blueberries and chia seeds, so that my cakes wouldn’t be too heavy and too unhealthy.

Here is my recipe. The bottom of the cake is really close to the recipe given on GK stories’ blog. The topping is a little different.

Makes approximately 20 cakes:

Bottom:

2 egg whites

100 g almond flour

50 g grated coconut

30 g muscovado sugar

30 g brown sugar

Topping :

100 g chocolate

1 cup blueberries (frozen or not)

2 TbS chia seeds

1 sheet or 2 g edible gelatin

10 dates

1. Preheat your oven at 180°C (360°F)

2. Whip egg whites and sugars together until foaming. Add coconut and almond flour and mix until the dough is homogeneous and compact. If the dough can’t be shaped into a bowl, add more coconut or almond flour.

3. Use your fingers and a spoon to form little bowls. Place them on a baking trail lined with parchment paper and flatten them with your fingers. The balls should be half the size of a golf ball but you can make them larger.

Bake for 10 minutes (or until lightly golden) and let cool. Meanwhile, prepare the filling.

In a stand blender or using a hand blender, mix dates and blueberries. Poor in a saucepan and heat over medium heat.

Soak chia seeds in hot water for 5 minutes and gelatin in cold water for 10 minutes. Add soaked chia seeds and gelatin to blueberry and dates mix. Let cool down.

Assemble the biscuits: turn the biscuits upside down and spread 1 to 2 teaspoon filling onto the flat base. Use a spatula to shape it into a cone.

Melt the chocolate following its temperature curve (55°-29°-31°) and dip the cone into the chocolate. Remove extra chocolate with a spoon or spatula. Let cool in the fridge for 20 minutes or until chocolate is hard. Can be served immediately or kept for a few days in the fridge.

 

watercolor pigments

quirky detail from a store in La Gacilly

In France, we enjoy having a nice croissant or “pain au chocolat” for breakfast. It’s a treat that we often buy during week-ends because it’s very rich and not that cheap (if you had to buy it every morning, I can tell you would have to make some sacrifices on other expenses!).

It’s been a while since I have kept bothering my family with the “and what if I baked some croissant?”. So I finally stopped with the “what if” and dived into the world of flaky dough.

To me, baking croissant was just as difficult as climbing the Himalaya. I had this prejudice over flaky dough that somehow restrained my will to try to bake some. But even though it’s long to make, I can tell you it’ very, very, very easy. You just have to be patient.

Of course, if you’re in a hurry, you can always use the ready-to-use dough you can find in your local supermarket. But it always tastes so much better when you cook it yourself… And beside, you will feel like you have accomplished something great when you’ll see the happy look of your relatives or friends.

So let’s just not wait any longer and let’s dive into the world of flaky dough!

Recipe (Christophe Felder):

Note: you can find a step-by-step recipe on this blog. The blog is in French but I have translated the recipe and the pictures will be of great help if my translation isn’t good enough. Note that you can find many step by step recipes with pictures to help you. However, I didn't really like their recipes. I like to stick to french values when it comes to french pastries! I hope you understand that!!

Steps: 

Combine the flour, the sugar, the salt and the yeast (finely crumbled) in the bowl of a heavy-duty standing mixer. Be careful, as you put in the ingredients before mixing, that the yeast and the salt do not touch one another.

Mix for a couple minutes and add in the water and milk. Keep mixing at medium speed until your dough loosens from the bowl’s sides. Transfer the dough into a plastic wrap and give it the shape of a rectangle. Let it proof in the fridge for two hours or overnight. You just made your first “detrempe”! Congratulations!

Now, up to the “tourage”.

Place the butter in the freezer 10 minutes before removing the dough from the fridge. Remove the plastic wrap and set the dough on a floured work surface. Use a rolling pin to spread the dough, giving it the shape of a rectangle that is 7 mm thick. Wrap your butter in a plastic sheet and use a rolling pin to give it the shape of square (half the size of your dough rectangle).

Place the butter square at the bottom of your rectangle and cover it. It has to be fully covered by the dough. You have a fold and a closing. The fold has to face the wall opposite you and the closing has to face you. Use a rolling pin and spread the dough on a 7 mm thickness again.

Refold the lower part of the dough up to the two third of the dough. Refold the upper part and make sure both edges touch one another. Fold the rectangle that you just got in two, so that you get four layers of dough.

Wrap your dough in a plastic wrap and set it in the fridge for one hour.

Place the dough on a floured work surface. This time, the fold must be on your right and the closing on your left. Spread the dough on a 7 mm thickness again and fold the lower part up to the middle. Fold the upper part over. Wrap it in a plastic sheet and set it in the fridge for another hour.

Set the dough on a floured work surface. Make sure the fold is on your left and the closing on you right. Spread it on a 3 mm thickness. Use a long and sharp knife to cut rectangles into the dough. Roll the rectangles into a croissant shape and let them grow on a baking sheet for at least 2 hours. You can use this dough to bake “pains au chocolat”, danishes, “pains aux raisins”…

I chose to fill some of my pastries with almonds, rum and lime. It’s very simple: just mix together 100 g of almond flour with 100 g of powdered sugar. Add the juice of a lime and two or three tablespoons rum. Spread this mixture on the dough before rolling it.

Preheat your oven at 350°F (180°C). When your croissants and other pastries are ready to be baked, glaze them with some egg yolk. Bake the croissants for 15 minutes or until they are golden on the surface.

You can freeze them if you don’t eat them all.

 Be careful, they only keep fresh for up to 12 hours (but this last comment is perfectly useless).