This month’s challenge was time-consuming, but oh-so-worth-it. Croissants! Like baklava from a few months ago, a good croissant has lots of layers. In the case of croissants, you create those layers by interleaving dough and butter over and over again. It works beautifully and yields a pastry that is crisp and flaky on the outside, and steamy and soft on the inside. This was worth the many hours necessary to make these things (although, in all fairness, it is not difficult to make them, just time-consuming).

The Daring Bakers go retro this month! Thanks to one of our very talented non-blogging members, Sarah, the Daring Bakers were challenged to make Croissants using a recipe from the Queen of French Cooking, none other than Julia Child!

Since the technique involved so many steps, and a friend wanted me to share it and the recipe I used, I created a how-to recipe for croissants with pictures. I did not find the process particularly frustrating – there’s not a lot that go wrong – but this is not the sort of thing you can bang out in an hour if you have friends coming over for brunch. You have to plan.

Three pictures of my resulting croissants after the jump. They were delectable!