Cruffins

Cruffins are a lovely pastry, invented I believe by a bakery in the USA.  There are a couple of ways of making these pastries, which are usually then filled by piping some creme patissiere or jam or other such filling inside them.

One method of making them is to make a yeasted dough and roll it out very thinly indeed and coat the dough with softened butter before rolling tightly.  The resultant roll is then sliced in half along its’ length and then rolled into a swirl before being placed in a muffin tin to bake.  That is what I refer to as the easy way to make cruffins.

The more difficult, and I think the original way, is to create a croissant dough in the traditional manner and then to turn that into the cruffin.  That is the method I used for these cruffins, though I shall attempt the other method in a couple of weeks.

The method I used takes longer, as the dough must rest for hour and then must be rested between each activity of rolling and folding.  But it does have its’ rewards since the resultant cruffins are soft, light, immensely butter and just perfect to eat on their own or to fill with whatever you wish.

Mine turned out very well indeed.  They tasted fantastic and were, even though I say so myself, bake to perfection.

I would just caution that it is necessary to allow the dough to rest and proof for adequate times, to allow the correct rise to ensure that the right texture is achieved.

For mine, once shaped and resting in the muffin tin I actually allowed them to proof for almost two hours, though in the video I say an hour should be enough.  I wanted to ensure that they had at least doubled in size.

Ingredients:

• 500g(3 3/4 cups + 1tbsp) cake and pastry flour( plain or bread flour will work fine too.
• 75g(6 tbsp) caster sugar, or granulated
• 100g 7 tbsp) unsalted butter at room temperature
• 250g (2 sticks + 1 1/2 tsbp) cold unsalted butter
• 10g ( 1 1/4 packets, or 2 1/2 tsp) instant yeast.  If you only have a packet it will be fine, just proof for longer.
• 95ml(1/3 cup + 1 tbps) milk
• 135 ml (1/2 cup _ 1 tbsp) water
• 6g( 1 1/2 tsp) sat.
• 1 egg and a little milk beaten together for an egg wash.

Method:

1. Place the flour into the bowl of a stand mixer,
2. Add the salt, followed by the 100g butter, then the sugar, then the milk and then the yeast.
3. Start the mixer on a low speed until everything begins to come together.
4. Increased the speed to medium/low and slowly add the water.
5. When the mixture has come together continue mixing until the comes away from the side of the bowl.
6. Knead on medium speed until the dough is smooth and very elastic, so that stretching the dough doesn’t break it.  This will take between 5 and 10 minutes usually).
7. Remove the dough from the bowl, onto a lightly floured surface and form into a ball.
8. Flatten the ball and roll it out into a rectangle with a thickness of about 8mm(1/3 inch).
9. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and chill for at least 4 hours,  or overnight is fine.
10. Take the 250g of cold butter and place between two sheets of parchment paper, with one piece marked to show the size of rectangle you need.
11. Hit the butter, repeatedly, with a rolling pin until it begins to soften enough to roll it out.
12. Roll the butter into a rectangle which is half the size of the rolled dough(my dough was 34 cm x 25 cm so I made my butter 17cm by 25 cm).
13. As the butter softens you can spread it to the size required.
14. Wrap the butter in the parchment paper and chill for at least 20 minutes.
15. Place the dough onto a lightly floured surface and roll it out a little two increase the length and width by about 2 cm.
16. Place the rectangle of butter in the top half of the dough rectangle, leaving a 1 cm margin above it and to the sides as well.
17. Fold the lower half on the dough up over the butter and press the overlapping edges down to seal the butter in.
18. Turn the dought 90 degrees and gently roll it out, rolling from the centre to the top and from the centre to the bottom.  You want the length to increase.  The width will also increase, but not so much. (my dough was rolled to a length of 42cm(16 inches).
19. Fold the lower edge of the dough up onto itself to cover the middle third of the dough( so in my case I folded 14cm of dough onto another 14 cm of dough).
20. Fold the remaining one third of dough over onto itself( for me it was 7cm folded onto 7cm).
21. Seal the edges to join them.
22. Now fold the dough in half from the bottom to top, like closing a book.
23. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and chill for 30 minutes.
24. Place the dough on a lightly floured surface, with the rounded, closed, edge on the right side.
25. Roll the dough out again to a thickness of about 5 or 6 mm.
26. Fold the bottom third of the dough onto the middle third.
27. Fold the top third of the dough onto the other two thirds.
28. Wrap in plastic wrap and chill for 30 to 40 minutes.
29. Roll the dough again, with the rounded edge on the right as before, to a size of about 56cm(22 in) by 24cm(9 1/2 in).  This is so that we can trim the edge and be left with a 54cm x 22cm rectangle.
30. Trim the edges to create the rectangle.
31. Now cut 12 strips 22cm long and 4.5 cm wide.
32. Spray a muffin tin with non stick baking spray, or grease and flour it.
33. Roll up 6 strips into 6 spirals and place them standing up, so the spiral is exposed, into the muffin tin.
34. For the remaining 6 strips, cut the 1.5cm strips along the length, but leaving about 3 cm uncut.
35. Braid/plait the three strips together and then roll up the braid until it covers the uncut part.
36. Place each of the 6 rolled up braids, into the muffin tin, with the uncut piece on the bottom.
37. Lightly brush the tops of each shaped piece of dough with egg wash.
38. Cover and allow to proof for about 2 hours, until the dough has doubled in size.
39. As that time approaches the end preheat the oven to 200C or 400F.
40. Uncover the proofed dough and brush again with egg wash.
41. Place into the oven and bake for 6 minutes.
42. Reduce the oven temperature to 180C/350F and bake for a further 12 minutes, until the dough has gone quite a dark brown.  I tested the internal temperature for mine and it had reached 99C/210F.
43. Remove from the oven and leave for a couple of minutes then gently tease the cruffins out of the muffin tin and place onto a wire rack to cool completely.
44. Once cooled they can be served, dusted with icing sugar if desired, or filled with whatever you wish.