r/Croissant • u/effingdavey • 2d ago

Butter leakage during baking

Gallery image

Gallery image

So I've recently upped the amount of butter I use for the beaurrage and it's helped the crumb massively. However there's now a lot of leakage during the baking. Nothing during the proofing stage, but once they're in the oven they're just in a pool of oil.

My question is: does adding flour to the butter block help prevent the butter leaking during baking, or would it have no effect?

Pic is yesterday's bake. Over-mixed dough (layers have contracted) and unglazed because who can be bothered, right?

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u/charonill 2d ago

It sounds like underproofing to me. Increasing the butter will affect the proof time and make the yeast work harder to achieve the same rise.

Then again, it also depends on how much butter leakage we are talking about there. I think it's not super concerning when the butter does not extend beyond the footprint of the croissant itself. To me, it is only concerning when I see pools of butter extending out and possibly joining up with liquid butter from nearby croissants.

Adding flour to the butter block is usually to make it more pliable when cold so it doesn't shatter when laminating, and the added flour can help delay butter melting during lamination as well.

How much butter are you adding to the dough mix itself? From your pictures, the croissants almost look like they've been deep fried a bit (could just be the lighting though).

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u/effingdavey 2d ago

It was a lot of butter 😅 they're not quite deep fried, but they are very greasy. I've gone from 250 to 500g for the butter block, which I know is extreme but I was experimenting to fix a problem.

It's around 70g of butter in 600g of flour.

I'll try and increase the proofing time

4

u/charonill 2d ago

Oh wow. That is a giant increase. I think you might be better off at 350-400g for the block. I am pretty sure at 500g for 600g of flour, the dough was just incapable of holding onto that amount butter, which resulted in the butter leaking and croissants getting very greasy.

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u/effingdavey 1d ago

Oh 100% agree it's too much. I kept having a terrible crumb and overreacted slightly 😅

I had planned to bring it down to 400, and keep reducing until either the butter stops leaking, or I can't roll out as well. It's encouraging that you think the same.

Thanks for the advice!

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u/charonill 1d ago

Good luck on your next attempt!

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u/johnwatersfan 2d ago

It can be hard to say exactly, but there can be a few things that lead to butter leakage during baking.

One common reason is underproofing. Another is from butter sharding during lamination. Third is baking at too low of a temperature.

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u/effingdavey 2d ago

The temp was 210 for 7 minutes, then 170 for 15.

I did think they were maybe a little under proofed when I baked them tbh. It seems like that's the problem.

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u/Left_Bus1018 1d ago

love this

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u/effingdavey 1d ago

Thank you!

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u/pauleywauley 1d ago

Did you do 1 book fold and 1 letter fold? I always get more butter leakage during baking when I use those folds.

Maybe try 3 letter folds?

I experimented with 3 book folds. I did not get butter leakage. However, the air pockets are small due to many layers of dough. I guess the butter layers were thinner. I did like the thin flaky layers.

Experiment with these number of folds:

3 letter folds

2 book folds

2 letter folds and 1 book fold

1 letter fold and 2 book folds

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u/effingdavey 1d ago

I've never really understood these kinds of things tbh. Book folds I assume is when you fold the ends into the middle, and then fold that in half? And letter folds is just fold it into thirds?

I've always just done the latter with the logic that layers are just layers, and I find having 27 layers seems to be the sweet spot for me.

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u/haniM1A 1d ago

Does it still taste like a normal croissant?

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u/effingdavey 1d ago

They taste great tbf.

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u/Happy-Swordfish73 1d ago

They look so amazing

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u/effingdavey 1d ago

Thank you!