Today I’m sharing a croissant variation. Am I allowed to admit that these are even better than the original? Ultra thin layers. Buttery crispness. Melted chocolate. Confectioners’ sugar dusting. Simple. Decadent. There’s absolutely nothing on earth better than a warm chocolate croissant unless that warm chocolate croissant was proudly handmade in your own kitchen. You’ve come to the right place today. 🙂 I’m not going into specifics today since I typed a novel about croissants the other week. Rather, we’ll focus our attention on rolling the croissants with chocolate. We’re starting with the same exact croissant dough. I talk about this a lot in the croissants recipe, but it’s worth repeating: croissant dough must remain cold and requires a lot of resting. Because of all that rest, there’s a time commitment to making this pastry. Which is why croissants are a delicious weekend project! You’ll complete steps 1-12 in the original croissants recipe. Things change when it’s time to shape the dough. Once your dough has finished the 2nd 4 hour rest, roll and shape it into a long 8×20-inch rectangle. Use your pizza cutter and slice the rectangle down the center to create two 4×20-inch rectangles. Then slice across 3x to create eight 4×5-inch rectangles. So far, this is exactly what you do when you make the original croissants. Instead of slicing each of those rectangles diagonally into triangles, you’ll cut them in half to create 16 smaller rectangles. You could definitely keep the same triangle shape as we do with regular croissants, but the rectangle shape protects the chocolate from oozing out too much. And you can fit more chocolate inside. 🙂 Speaking of chocolate! There are special conveniently sized chocolate batons you can purchase—just search the internet for chocolate batons—but I’d rather use the same chocolate I use for everything else: baking chocolate. I just buy it at the grocery store. You can use any brand of baking chocolate you like best, but I prefer the thinness of Ghirardelli’s baking bars. They slice thinly and neatly, fitting snug inside the croissant dough. I like to use a darker chocolate like bittersweet or semi-sweet. Now let’s roll up the chocolate croissants. Take each rectangle and gently stretch it out with your hands to be 8 inches long. Place a few pieces of chocolate at one end and roll it up tightly inside. Like a little sleeping bag for chocolate! We’re back to the original croissant recipe from here on out. Allow the shaped chocolate croissants to proof at room temperature for 1 hour, then continue in the refrigerator for another. I prefer the shaped chocolate croissants to be cold going in the oven because they won’t spread as much. The chocolate croissants will rise and proof at room temperature and continue to do so in the refrigerator. After this time, they’ll be a little more puffy and ready to bake. Brush them with an egg wash and 20 minutes later, you’ll understand the hype. Like I said before, there’s absolutely nothing better than a homemade fresh croissant filled with a river of melted chocolate. They’re golden brown with hundreds of crisp flaky layers (and that’s from a dough we laminated 3x!). A snow shower of confectioners’ sugar is necessary. Chocolate croissants, or pain au chocolat in French! If you don’t feel quite ready to tackle croissants, you can also make a loaf of croissant bread with slightly shorter rest times and easier shaping.
