Tag: croissant

Flat croissant, the phenomenon of the flat croissant in Italy – Italian cuisine reinvented by Gordon Ramsay

THE flat croissants they are flat, colourful, very sweet and crunchy croissants, the complete opposite of an airy and soft traditional croissant, empty and even without sugar. I’m the opposite, but it’s the way we could save brioche from being wasted and from being a very poorly paid job. It takes at least 48 hours to make a croissant. In fact, it is necessary to let it rise, to incorporate the butter into the flour, to let it rise again to have a final alveolation and – as the classic recipe dictates – 27 exact layers. Very thin, airy, separated as much as possible as a perfectly made pastry would require. A lot of work and a huge quantity of a precious ingredient like butter which is the true test of a pastry shop, yet it is a product that is often sold almost below cost – we talked about it with Davide Longoni, advocate of a whole new generation of bakers Italians. Because in the perception of us customers, the “brioche at the bar” is a quick breakfast, which we are used to paying just over a euro. It matters little that those are defrosted and based on low quality margarine, they have “imposed” a reference price from which it is difficult to distance oneself, even in an expensive city like Milan. So how to do it? Offer other products, or enhance the croissant in an alternative way, perhaps giving it an original, unique shape (at least for a while), which creates hype.

Cronuts, cruffins, rolls and cubes

In 2013 it was the cronuts, a chimera that merged croissants and donuts, and the cruffins, a portmanteau between croissants and muffins, that were talked about all over the world. Ten years later it was the turn of roll-shaped croissants, which landed in the international news from New York, quickly followed by cube-shaped ones. The Roll Croissants or Suprême were invented by pastry chef Scott Cloe of La Fayette Bakery in New York, the Crubik instead by a Swedish pastry chef, Bedros Kabranian made viral thanks to a first replica in London and in Italy by the Farmacia del Cambio of Turin. Talking about new things makes you smile, now you can find them from Salento to Valle d’Aosta: from then to today social networks have changed, everything flows faster, fashions, pastry chefs who emulate other people’s creations and the industry, which travels very fast. Within a year of their social success, rolls and cubes were already sold in frozen and ready-to-cook versions by various companies at sector fairs such as Sigep in Rimini.

The trends that serve to sell

«The idea of the cubic or spherical croissant was launched mostly by those who produce the baking molds to make them thundered Iginio Massari during an interview with Alfredo, the food branch of Rolling Stones. Absolutely true, just as the pistachio trend was made possible by importers and producers of preparations, square panettone are the invention of the market leader in the field of baking shapes and so on. In the consumer society there is always someone who wants to sell you something. Manufacturers of moulds, ingredients and frozen brioches who teach how to use their frozen croissants to make them into cubes (cutting them in two and inserting them into the mold by reversing the tips and then closing the lid – in case someone wants to make them by hand but with ready-made products…). Now that we all know how to make them, pastry shops have already started working to create the next trend, and it’s called flat croissant, it comes from South Korea, where in 2023 it literally invaded TikTok.

What is the flat croissant

The flat croissant is a flat croissant. You can take a normal, baked, good or poor quality croissant of your choice, flatten it with a rolling pin, brush it with butter and sugar, griddle it or bake it between two baking trays. Or you can make the pastry, take 48 hours, roll up the croissant and then bake it between two baking trays, eliminating the leavening effect. It can be a recycled recipe, invented to resell the unsold croissants the next day, or a useless waste of time, the result is that after having dipped it in chocolate or another covering, you can sell it for three times more than a classic croissant . It could be the usual media meteor, or a good idea to not waste, in a sexy way. In fact, it would not be the first recycled recipe to be tastier than the original raw material.

Creative recycling of croissants around the world

There are different ways to recycle leftover croissants. Casseroles in the oven after having dipped them in milk and eggs, there are those who cook them again in the waffle iron, in Spain they call them Croissants a la Plancha, brioche from the day before opened in two and fried in butter on both sides, served with butter and jam. In France they are a classic Almond Croissant which are opened in two, filled with almond paste, brushed with butter and flaked almonds and baked. In Copenhagen, with the side cuts of the dough for croissants, the very famous pastry chef Richard Hart (who made his name as head baker at the legendary Tartine Bakery in San Francisco) at his Hart Bageri began to propose the Cardamom Croissant, originally made with leftover croissant dough and lots of butter and cardamom sugar. It has become the most requested item and so now it is produced from scratch, although flat croissants would have ended a little anyway.

How to reheat the brioche from the day before? – Italian cuisine reinvented by Gordon Ramsay

How to heat the Brioche from the day before and unfortunately already stale? As easy as drinking a glass of water, or rather, milk.

If you have any leftovers Brioche in fact, don’t throw them away: I’ll tell you here a little trick with which you can make them more fragrant than ever. This is a ruse as simple as it is effective which will amaze you and which is worth using, in particular in the case of empty croissants or ones filled with jam or creams that do not contain fresh creams or cream, which can sour and therefore should be consumed in spades. A trick that actually works even with croissants placed in the freezer and defrosted.

The secret of this technique is bath in milk: this ingredient will superficially rehydrate your brioches. Do this: pour a glass of milk into a bowl. Quickly dip your stale brioches one at a time, taking care to wet them all over the surface. Drain them, then place them on a baking tray lined with baking paper. Bake at 150°C for 4-5 minutes: the result will be one soft brioche again inside and fragrant on the outside. You can also replicate this trick with other types of milk: soy, rice, oats.

How to reheat the brioche from the day before?

In the microwave: pay attention to the power

If, however, you simply want to reheat the brioche from the day before, the super-fast solution is the minimum temperature, in the microwave. Example: 400W per no more than 20 seconds: the butter or vegetable fats abundantly contained in the brioche will melt again, returning it to its ancient fragrance. If you exaggerate with the power, on the contrary, the brioche will dehydrate even more, becoming very stringy and, at that point, not very pleasant.

In the pan

When you reheat your stale brioches in a pan, place them on a low heat and cover. After a few minutes, turn them over, raise the heat and moisten the bottom of the pan with them a few drops of water. Close the lid, wait a few seconds and turn off: they will be soft and rehydrated again.

In the toaster

Another effective method is to cut the brioche in two lengthwise and heat the two halves in the toaster for a few moments and then fill them.

With the egg

Another method similar to brushing the brioches with a beaten egg and baking them: this will brown them and make them crispier on the outside. However, be careful when regulating the temperature: do not go above 150°C or they will darken too much.

Ideas for fillings

If they are empty, fill them with a plain one chocolate cream express obtained by melting chocolate with milk in the microwave at maximum power (75 g for 2 teaspoons of milk). You will have a delicious spreadable cream ready in 1 minute which you can also add with chopped hazelnuts or pistachios and spread on your regenerated brioche.

Savory version? Avocado toast version. A few slices of avocado, smoked salmon and spreadable cheese or raw ham, flakes of Parmesan and spinach seasoned with a few drops of oil and soy sauce.

Croissant day: January 30th is celebrated, here’s the news – Italian cuisine reinvented by Gordon Ramsay

On January 30th the world celebrates the croissant: it is the Croissant Day. A world day entirely dedicated to the sweet symbol of breakfast in the world. In fact it was born in the United States, in 2006. How to celebrate Croissant Day? Eating it in a classic and innovative version: it has come a long way since its birth. Now it also has new shapes and new flavors.

The «cube croissant

The latest sweet novelty is the «cube croissant: yes, the Croissant cube, so widespread now that it could replace the classic one. No longer in the shape of a croissant, as the Austrians thought of it in 1683 to commemorate the victory against the Ottoman Empire (recalling the crescent shape of the Turkish flag), and as the French did it again on the occasion of the wedding between Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette of Austria, adding more butter and renaming it «croissant (from «crescent, i.e. growing). Now the brioche (to call it Milanese style) has exactly that captivating and stylish shape of a parallelepiped, and this made it the perfect dessert for social media too. If it is so famous it is precisely because it has gone viral: on TikTok there are millions of videos with the hashtag #cubecroissant, including posts by tasters and passionate pastry chefs who try to try their hand at the new catchphrase.

Who invented the cube croissant

It all started on social media, after all. In 2018, with a post by the Swede Bedros Kabranian, world bakery champion. It was his idea, and he called it Le crube (a portmanteau of “croissant” and “cube”). He got there after several trials. Since the dough of a cube croissant grows much less than the traditional shape, Bedros Kabranian had to do a series of calculations to understand how much the mold needed to be filled. After he succeeded, no one stopped him, and he proposed it in many different versions: empty, filled with creams, glazed, sweetened. Because, apart from the shape, the rest of the cube croissant is the same as the original.

Where to taste the cube croissant in Italy

In Italy we know him thanks to the famous Turin Cambio Pharmacy which, in 2019, launched its Crubik, «characterized by a crunchy shell and a very soft heart (so he writes on his website). A brioche filled with custard or chocolate cream which immediately became a craze, and still is: it is not uncommon, four years after the “invention”, to come across local news articles that tell of the line of customers in Piazza Carignano to taste the specialty of Matteo Baronetto and Maicol Vitellozzi . Turin residents and tourists, all there. Maybe even to take a photo and post it.