I’ve made croissants using a high protein (bread/hard) flour and was looking at some recipes that used cake flour. Has anyone here used cake flour for croissants? I’m thinking of trying out a recipe by Cedric Grolet in his Opera book (it’s available on the “read a sample” for kindle) but if it’s a flop, that’s a lot of expensive butter wasted, so I thought I’d wait for any advice here first.
He also uses pastry flour for palmiers, which has me curious.
Any input welcome.
My daughter and I have made them several times but generally using fairly hard flours like KA’s bread flour or spelt, which I think may have an even higher protein content than bread flour.
But I ran into this guy just now while googling and although he does not test 100% cake flour, he does do a relatively low protein content croissant using a mix of KA’s AP and cake flours. Also tested were bread flour, all AP, and two French flours (TIL they use a different rating system not having to do with protein) designated as “T45” and “T55”.
The upshot of his testing seems to be that you might get some variation in crumb and/or crust, but they all worked fine (but like I said he didn’t test an all cake flour recipe).
Thanks for this. I’ll have to give the soft flour ones a try.
I’ve only used AP flour. many Euro-based recipes use T55.
searching on “flour for croissant” brings up kabillions of hits and the ‘recommendations’ are all over the spectrum…
T45 flour is equivalent to Type 00 Italian flour, Euro 450 flour type and American Cake flour.
T55 flour is equivalent to Type 0 Italian flour, Euro 550 flour type and American all purpose flour.
I thought Type 0 or Type 00 had to do with the fineness of the grind, rather than the protein content.
I’m sure I’ve seen Type 00 flour for pasta and another pizza/bread. The difference was protein content/gluten formation ability.
I have always used bread flour. Yes on the butter. I just bought european butter and cost was $16. Can. Got it at a polish deli. Hey but Cedric Grolet how can you not try them. I drool oved his instagram. Wish we could still travel, his bakery would be on my list.
it’s a bit more complicated than that…
here’s a more detailed “description”
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That was a very comprehensive article. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the Italian system explained fully. Thanks!
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