From It's Complicated · 2009 · Reconstructed
Chocolate Croissants (Pain au Chocolat)
Serve when
The dough goes through the sheeter, gets cut into triangles, and a bar of chocolate goes into each one before it's rolled — that's the moment to start your own batch alongside them.
In the movie
Theatrical
- ~01:34:30 At 1 a.m. in her bakery, Jane teaches Adam to make chocolate croissants from scratch — sheeting the dough, cutting triangles, rolling a chocolate bar into each one — and they eat a stack of them warm, straight from the oven
This is the film's most tender food scene: at one in the morning, high and giddy, Jane walks Adam into her bakery kitchen and teaches him to laminate dough from scratch, right down to folding the chocolate bar into the triangle himself. The mechanics of croissant- making — the sheeter, the folding, the shaping — get more screen time here than any other dish in the film, and the payoff is a stack of them shared at a restaurant table afterward, Adam and Jane each reaching for the next one. It's a genuine skill being handed over in real time, which is more intimacy than either of them are prepared to name out loud yet.
Ingredients
- For the laminated dough:
- To fill:
Method
- Make the dough: dissolve the yeast in the cold milk, then mix with the flour, sugar, salt, and melted butter into a shaggy dough. Knead briefly, shape into a rectangle, wrap, and chill at least 2 hours.
- Pound the cold laminating butter into a flat rectangle about half the size of the dough. Roll the dough out, place the butter block in the center, and fold the dough over it to enclose completely.
- Roll the dough out into a long rectangle, then fold it in thirds like a letter. Chill 30 minutes. Repeat this roll-and-fold two more times, chilling between each. If butter ever starts squishing out or the dough fights back as you roll, stop and chill it 15 minutes — cold, rested dough is the whole secret to the layers.
- Roll the laminated dough out to about 1/4 inch thick and cut into rectangles roughly 4 by 6 inches.
- Lay a chocolate baton near one edge of each rectangle, roll it over once, add a second baton, and roll the rest of the way up into a log.
- Arrange seam-side down on parchment-lined sheets, cover loosely, and let proof in a warm spot until noticeably puffy, about 1 1/2 to 2 hours.
- Brush with egg wash and bake at 400°F for 16–20 minutes, until deeply golden and flaky. Eat warm, ideally stacked in a pile between two people who should probably not be doing this together.
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