Ciabatta and Cream Cheese Croissants

Really nice ciabatta bread.

I still haven't much luck with croissants but my ciabatta bread is really getting quite good. See above.

I made cream cheese croissants today, instead of butter croissants, i.e., I roll cream cheese into the dough instead of butter. I really wasn't getting good results with butter. The tropical heat melts the butter so fast that it gets absorbed into the dough. This interferes with the dough rising because oil retards yeast growth. As a result, the bread stays flat. Worse still, when it comes to baking, the melted butter leaks out of the dough into a puddle on the tray and starts to deep fry the base of my croissants. Aiyaiyaiyaiyai! I've just made fried croissants!

To make good croissants, the layers of dough and butter must remain distinct. To make good croissants, one needs to roll the dough in a room cooled to 22 Deg C. It was impossible to do that in my open concept kitchen even with the air conditioner at full blast. A 3-storey air well leads up from my kitchen to a skylight in the roof. This makes my kitchen impossible to properly air condition.

But I still like croissants.

So I decided to roll cream cheese into the dough. Cream cheese is more tolerant of the tropical temperatures and still able to give flaky dough... albeit without the buttery sinfulness of a real croissant. What the heck though! I like the croissants for the fluffy flaky texture. I can always spread butter on top eh? 

I think this method has potential. I'm still quite lousy at it but with practice, I should get better results. 

The cream cheese laminated layers look quite good.

Just out of the oven.

Still not quite there with the crumb... more practice needed!!