Pain au Chocolat by RL Neumiller

That image above is what pain au chocolat should be, fluffy and airy.

To complete Goal 047 I needed to join the Daring Bakers for one of their monthly cooking challenges. I joined this month’s challenge last weekend and it went swimmingly, but the recipe didn’t rise.

I used the recipe from Kris Holechek’s vegan baking book, it’s a good book and I’ve had fun cooking recipes from it over the last year. Like all pain au chocolat or croissant recipes it’s a bit fiddly but each stage takes time so you don’t have to do everything at once.

The dough gets made, with lots of rolling, folding, lining with margarine, re-folding, re-rolling etc. Then it goes in the fridge for a couple of hours. Then you slice it into pieces, add the chocolate and roll it into the final shape. Leave them to rise for an hour and then finish them in the oven.

I was covered in flour the entire time but the amor took some photos of the process (excuse the fact he was using his phone!):

The final pains tasted good but they looked more like sausage rolls and were far too bready for my taste. I’m not sharing a photo as I know they weren’t really right. I think the problem was either the recipe using too little margarine/too few foldings in the layering stage or too little rising happening in the final stage. I’m tempted to try the same recipe again but add more margarine and use the oven on the lowest setting to help it rise…

Fun to try something new though, I’ve never tried making croissants or pains au chocolat before.