Croissant Dough Laminated with Rendered Duck Fat and Miso
Butter makes a croissant. Our bakery desk asked what duck fat would make, laminated 27 layers deep and seasoned with red miso, and the answer is a savoury pastry that shatters like the original and tastes like a confit. Numbers, timings and the one thing that went wrong.
- 500 g strong white flour
- 10 g salt
- 55 g sugar
- 10 g instant yeast
- 140 ml cold milk
- 140 ml cold water
- 210 g rendered duck fat, chilled
- 90 g butter
- 24 g red miso
- 1 egg, beaten, to glaze
- Mix the flour, salt, sugar, yeast, milk and water into a smooth dough. Knead 5 minutes, then chill, wrapped, for 1 hour.
- Beat the duck fat, butter and miso until uniform. Shape between two sheets of paper into a 20 cm square and chill to firm but pliable.
- Roll the dough to a 20 by 40 cm rectangle, place the fat block on one half, fold the other half over and seal the edges.
- Roll to 20 by 60 cm and fold in three. Chill 40 minutes. Repeat twice more, chilling each time.
- Roll to 4 mm thick, cut into triangles with a 10 cm base, and roll each into a croissant. Prove at 22 C for 2 to 2.5 hours until puffed.
- Glaze with egg and bake at 200 C for 18 to 20 minutes until deep brown. Cool 10 minutes before eating.
A croissant is a laminated dough: a block of butter folded into a yeasted dough over and over until there are dozens of alternating layers, which the oven turns to steam and lift. The fat has to be plastic at fridge temperature, firm enough to stay in a sheet but soft enough to roll without cracking. Butter is perfect for this at about 14 degrees. Duck fat, rendered and chilled, is softer, which is the whole problem and the whole opportunity.
Our bakery desk solved the softness by blending: 70 percent rendered duck fat, 30 percent butter, and 8 percent by weight of red miso, beaten together, shaped into a block and chilled to 10 degrees. The blend laminates like butter with a little more care, gives the layers a faint amber colour, and bakes into a croissant that smells of a roasting bird. The miso, distributed through every layer, seasons the pastry from inside so it needs no salt on top and tastes, improbably, of confit and caramel.
The numbers
- Dough: 500 g strong flour, 10 g salt, 55 g sugar, 10 g instant yeast, 140 ml milk, 140 ml water. Fat block: 210 g duck fat, 90 g butter, 24 g red miso.
- Laminate with three single folds, resting 40 minutes in the fridge between each, for 27 layers. The blend softens fast: work in a cold kitchen or return the dough to the fridge the moment it feels tacky.
- Bake at 200 C for 18 to 20 minutes. Yield: 12 croissants. Cost per croissant: about 0.60 euros, roughly a third more than butter.
What went wrong
The first batch leaked. Duck fat has a lower melting point than butter and the layers fused during the final proof, which we had run at 26 degrees as usual. Proving at 22 degrees for longer, two and a half hours instead of ninety minutes, kept the layers separate. Eat these warm, split, with a slice of cold duck rillette if you want to make the point twice, or with apricot jam if you want to make it once.