Viennoiserie played a major roll in my decision to go to culinary school. If you’ve ever had a really good croissant, and if you love baking as much as I do, you’ve probably spent a few sleepless nights wondering how that baker who made that perfect croissant achieves such gorgeous, buttery, flaky perfection.






Questions like this led me to research online, where I discovered that the secret to great viennoiserie (the blanket term for pastry that originated in Vienna and was perfected in France, including croissant, pain au chocolat, and danish of all ilk) lies in the ability to create many uniform, alternating layers of dough and butter by rolling out the dough, folding the butter inside it like an envelope, and then rolling it flat and folding it over itself a couple of different times (rinse, wash, repeat).

There are two ways to roll out the dough between each folding of the dough when making viennoiserie. You can do it the old fashioned (read: time consuming way) by hand, or you can do it using a machine called a sheeter. A sheeter is a must have if you are planning to make croissants on a daily basis. It also is a near-necessity for truly perfect croissants because it gives you perfectly even rolled out dough (and butter), and it works fast, keeping things cold, which is important. I first discovered the sheeter in this video from The City Bakery, which shows you the whole process in mass production, if you are interested.





Using a sheeter makes a potentially hard part (rolling the dough, focusing on the temperatures) easy, and frees you up for concentrating on the really hard part: shaping. I’ve made croissants at least five times now in class, two big sheet pans at a time. I’ve also made raisin danish spirals with pastry cream and apricot cream cheese pinwheels, both, unfortunately, not pictured. All of these items are really hard to shape perfectly, although the chefs make it seem effortless.





Learning to make croissants became a fixation of mine, and I started using it as the opening argument in the ongoing internal debate: Halt Career to Go to Cooking School? Yes? No? It was one of those things that I would never be able to learn how to do well without the proper equipment. A very small bullet point in the “pros” column that was a catalyst for getting more serious about considering school a viable possibility.





And lo, I am not an expert, but these are pictures of croissants that I made, and I’m getting more happy with my technique each time I make them. It’s a skill I’ll take with me when I go looking for baking work after graduation from bread class next week. Exciting times!