This morning I cut into a croissant that I baked yesterday afternoon (and ate it soon afterwards!)
I’ve been trying my best to see what I can do to affect the cross-section crumb to get the “honeycomb” I see mores skilled bakers attain.
On this last bake I had played with my lock-in technique. And (again) inadvertently played with my baking temp.
During lock-in I wasn’t as patient and ended up breaking my butter. But not as egregiously as before.
I proved for 4 hours and ended up baking at 400°F (convection) because again I was distracted. Baking time was 15 minutes without opening my oven.
Here is how the crumb turned out…
I looked back to my most recent bakes and example cross-sections from those croissants.
Something is going on here…
You can see in the previous bakes lots of larger pockets and more dense dough sections.
I just can’t seem to figure out what the combination of variables is doing.
I’m leaning towards needing the 4+ hour final prove given my ambient temperature in my house. I’m also thinking 400°F (convection) maybe the right thing as well.
Next time I’ll be intentional about keeping those variables in play.
Baked By Bear Sourdough 