Source
Exploratory Kitchen
Yield: 12 Croissants
Active Time: 4 hours
Total Time: 3 days
Equipment
Standing mixer
Rolling pin
Ingredients
1 batch of basic croissant dough
125g all-purpose flour
35g water
35g whole milk
14g granulated sugar
10g softened unsalted butter
3g active dry yeast
3g salt
Gel food color
Procedure
- To my standing mixer, equipped with the dough hook, I added the flour, water, milk, sugar, softened butter, yeast, and salt. Then I let my mixer run on low speed for 5 minutes. Because of how little dough there was, the mixer was not effective and I switched to hand kneading. As I was forming the dough I added some gel color until I achieved the desired brightness. I wasn’t using high quality food coloring and ended up having to use more gel then I would normally have liked. It did add a bit of moisture to the dough but I ignored it as it wasn’t significant enough.
- When the croissant dough was ready, I simply rolled out this colored dough to about 1/4 inch thickness before pulling the croissant dough from the fridge. The colored dough was placed on top of the croissant dough so that the croissant dough was fully covered before rolling them both out and shaping as desired. Treat the colored dough the same as part of the croissant dough. The baking time and instructions were not altered for the two toned croissants.
Results
This experiment resulted in a vibrant colored dough which retained its elasticity. I have never seen it create the same air pockets as the rest of the croissant dough but I suspect this is because I don’t fold any butter into it and maybe the extra moisture from the gel food coloring didn’t do it any favors either. I would love to repeat this test with better quality food coloring.
Exploratory Kitchen 