Barnes & NobleLune: Croissants All Day, All Night by Kate Reid

Great Ideas that don't translate to American flour

If you get this book -- and you probably should if you love to bake croissants, despite the caveats below -- you must experiment with reducing the flour in the master recipe. Kate Reid is very specific about the flour to use --it is not available in the US but she offers some alternatives, which unfortunately are extremely expensive (three times the price of King Arthur Flour, for example). So like a number of others who have tried the master recipe, I used KA All-purpose flour (others have tried bread flour) and found it produced an extremely dry and heavy dough that is very, very difficult to work with. Reid also calls for fresh yeast, which is hard to find here; so if you have only dry yeast, you must adjust the recipe amount to one-third for instant yeast or four-tenths as much for active dry yeast. For example, 54 g fresh yeast is equivalent to 18 grams instant yeast. The master recipe is also quite large. If you have an older model stand mixer, you probably want to cut the recipe in half, or risk burning out the mixer motor. All these warnings aside, Lune contains many great ideas for croissants and their laminated cousins: danish, Kouign-Amann, etc. She demystifies Cruffins, and describes a method for Kouign-Amann that I much prefer to the usual. You can skip all the hardest work, pick up some bakery croissants and try some of her filled and twice-baked recipes, like a croissant named for Reese's Cup, featuring peanut butter and caramel.