The first of the two final challenges was Vienoisseries. This term was a little confusing at first as it is not something that you generally see these baked goods called in the shops. Basically in laymen’s terms it mean lamented dough pastries, commonly known to you and me as croissants or danishes.

As this was the final week, the judges decided to up their game even more by asking the bakers to make 2 different flavours of pastries. Rich chose to do make two different types of dough, which was definitely daring. At first I thought I would do the same, but after reading a bit about these types of dough, I chose to stick with the same dough for both. I decided to make two of my favourites type of croissants, pain aux chocolat which reminds me of camping holidays in France as a child, and Almond croissants.

The first part of the task was to make the dough. This dough required time to prove, along with rolling in the butter and an 8 hour prove in the fridge over night. Basically don’t make this dough with a plan to eat it ion the same day! Measuring out the ingredients took a longer time that usual, due to the vast quantity, plus, due to only having one mixer I couldn’t make them both at the same time. But then again, who has two mixers in their house?! The technique to making these croissant turned out to be relativity easy, is a just a little time consuming. The flour, yeast, salt and sugar are all added to the bowl and the water was added while the mixer was on a slow speed, then after a few minutes the speed was increased and it was left to do its work for about 6-8minutes. After the time was up I was left with a smooth, stiffish dough that needed to wrapped in clingfilm and chilled for an hour, the first of many hours!

While the dough was chilling in the fridge I go a move on with the butter. Each batch of dough required just over one patt of butter, which needed to be rolled out to a very specific measurement.

Butter Bashing
As with the Koign Ammans, the layer of butter needs to the an exact size and thickness, that is then folded into the dough, which has been rolled out to a specific measurement too. Trying to bash the butter into the exact measurements certainly released some of the tension that had built up over the past weeks, but not without it its own problems. The warmth of my hands made the butter nice and supple at first, but this soon changed and it became difficult to guarantee the thickness of the butter through out. Once both layers of butter were as precise as I could get them, I decided the best thing to do was to stick them in the freezer for a quick blast to harden up, trying to keep them as level as possible.

Folding, folding, folding
Now that the dough was rolled to the exact measurements of 60x20cm, the now rigid butter layer was recovered from the fridge. As it turned out the butter was not as level as I first though and hoped, which meant one of it was thinner than the other and in fact crumpled slightly. Once the butter was placed on the dough I have to crack the crumpled side which meant it was even less even than the rest of the butter. My only hope was to proceed as if nothing was different and hope that the numerous folding of the pastry would even out the layers.

The process of the pastry folding is the exact same principle as puff pastry, fold it in thirds and place in the fridge to harden for and hour before turning and rolling and folding again. The difference with this pastry is that after you have done this 3 times, you have to leave it in the fridge to prove, for eight hours! This meant that with the first set of folds with an hour in between, the first step of this pastry takes 12 hours, and a late night for me!

Pillows of pastry!
Oh good lord I really wasn’t prepared for what I was greeted with in the morning! The boyfriend had looked in the fridge before me and warned me that there had been some dramatic developments with the dough. Honestly what kind of dramatic thing could a dough do? Well inflate to the 3 times the size of the pastry you left in the fridge the previous night, and turning into giant pastry pillows

Fill me up…
As I said at the start I decided to go with a family favourite, Pain aux Chocolat, and my favourite sneaky indulgence of an Almond croissant. The first is simple enough, good chocolate, cut into strips, but a thats a little boring, so to pimp it up a bit I decided to add a little kick. Using a cupboard staple of dried chilis, I thought it would be interesting to sprinkle a few of the flakes along the strip of chocolate going in.

The Almond croissant are my little treat to myself once a month, on my way to work. I love the creamy texture mixed with the delicate pastry and the crunchy almond slices on the top. I had lots of almonds left over from the previous challenges with baklava and marzipan, plus I thought I would add a few extras…Making this was nice, easy and pretty low maintenance, especially compared to the dough, basically everything is chopped, whizzed and mixed in the trusty food processor. What you’re left with is something yummy and paste like in consistency, that you have to avoid eating!

Cut, measured and rolled.
Now we’re on the home stretch of these little darlings, it was time to grab the ruler again, I never thought I would a ruler in the kitchen this much, and start the final rolling. For the Almond croissants the dough needed to be rolled and cut into triangles, once again measured precisely. The dough was then painted on with the yummy almond paste and rolled up from wide end to pointy. Finished of with a final a pasting on the top and sprinkled with the all important flakes almonds, these little darlings were now done. The Chocolate ones required less mathematics as they were just the rectangles. The chocolate strips were them placed along the short side of the rectangle, and in half of them I sprinkled the before mentioned chilli flakes. They were than rolled up into little logs, and placed on the baking trays along with the almonds ones, left to prove 2 hours. Once again this is not a recipe to do if you are on a time limit, so I feel a lot of sympathy for the GBBO bakers.

Baste & bake
After 2 hours they got the final prep before the oven, a gentle basting of the all important egg wash for that shiny golden glaze, which a croissant is simply naked without!

Chocolate Roulette and Almond Delight
They looked good, if a little uneven, especially the almond croissants, but they tasted yummy. The addition of the chilli was a little daring, especially as after the baking I couldn’t remember which ones they were, plus I had forgotten how spicy those dried chilli flakes can be! Throughout the bake it became clear that the rolling up of the pastries themselves could have been tighter, and that the end seam needed to be underneath them, otherwise they unrolled. Both pastries had a good lamination, especially the chocolate ones. I won’t be averse to making these again, but next time it’ll just the one batch of dough.

The remaining unbaked croissants that were frozen and baked beautifully and the flavour was richer, definitely something to bare in mind for parties!