I Ran A Custom Croissant Bakery For A Day

(upbeat funky music) - Hello friends and welcome to another video. Today I will be running a viral

croissant

bakery

. That's how it is. I said

croissant

. Now I like croissants and, at this point, who doesn't? Not only is the quintessentially French crescent-shaped cake super delicious and iconically flaky and buttery, but it's become something of an internet favorite in recent years. - Stop, I could have dropped the croissant. - Are you going to finish that croissant? - Croissant. - Croissant. - From anime to Jimmy Neutron, Vine and TikTok, people love croissants. And while I've always loved the taste of croissants, that huge package of croissants from Costco just tastes different.

It amazes me how much impact the product has on the public's imagination, as not only is it a highly popularized food, but it is also the basis for tons of super popular viral foods like the giant croissant, the croissant donut or the cronut, the waffle of croissant. or croffle, the croissant bomboloni, cromboloni and the croissant cookie or crookie. And not only do people line up for hours to try these delicious creations, but there is also tons of content of people kneading, rolling, decorating, baking, decorating, cutting, chewing and mashing these beautiful pastries. Maybe that's part of the reason these things are so popular.

The croissant is very difficult to make, but each step of the process is quite satisfying to look at. And then, after a single crack, it disappears. And after falling down a hole of croissant content, I thought, "I have to try making some (bleep) croissants." And in our quest to learn the craft behind strangely satisfying small niche businesses, running a croissant

bakery

seemed like the ideal fit. And in my search for a willing bakery, we stumbled upon Black Box Bakery, a bakery in Denver that specializes in unique, colorful, and flavorful croissants that gained notoriety for their crazy filled croissant cubes.

And against all odds, they agreed to let me take over their bakery for a day. and they both learn how to make croissant and also how to make some

custom

croissant cubes that if you go there in person, you can try for yourself. No word yet on whether we'll call them thugs or not, but I'll do my best. Alright, then let's make a croissant. But before we continue, I want to briefly congratulate the sponsor of this video, Headspace. If you're like me and have an overactive brain with basically a scrolling page inside of it, filled with your Google calendar, your to-do list, your email inbox, and the occasional flash of a croissant, you might benefit from a little Headspace.

Now, if you haven't heard of it before, Headspace offers a huge library of different content, from guided meditations to other self-care practices, to help you decrease stress, increase mindfulness, and take care of your mental health. Now, historically I haven't been that good at meditating, so at first I wasn't sure if Headspace would work for me, but Headspace has such a variety of different programs to choose from that even with just a few minutes a day, I can do breathing exercises. to feel more grounded or a quick five meditation to refocus and feel more productive. And my favorite and honestly what I use the most on Headspace is their huge catalog of Sleepcasts.

As you can see, I watch a lot of content and while I can spend hours scrolling in bed, it's not the best way to fall asleep. And Headspace's Sleepcasts are a great way to occupy my wandering brain instead of having my phone in my hand. Tyler and I love the casts of Beachcomber and Evening Tide, and you can even hear YouTube ASMR legend Gibi narrating Whispering Pines. So if you think Headspace could be useful in your life, we've partnered with them to offer viewers of this channel a 60-day free trial of the app so they can try it completely free.

All you have to do is sign up with my link in the description or scan the QR code on the screen somewhere on the screen, and who knows, a quiet, crispy croissant could be next. With that, thanks again to Headspace and now to the croissant. Now the first step in our search for croissants was to get to Denver. Interestingly, Denver seems to be something of a hotspot for croissants, something I wasn't aware of before researching this video. I haven't historically spent much time there, as some of you may remember, we spent about 30 minutes at Denver Union Station on our cross-country train trip, but where the croissants are, I go, so that's where we went.

Alright, we're here at the Edgewater Public Market in Denver, Colorado, outside Black Box Bakery, and we're about to go in and make some damn croissants, people. And when we arrived, Black Box founder and master baker Arielle was waiting for us ready to put an apron on me and whip me into shape. - Alright. So uniform first. And from the beginning I felt super professional in the chef jacket they assigned me and the corresponding apron. - Look, I was born to be a chef. (group laughing) - I'll bring you a towel too. - Oh, a towel. One thing you can't do is give me a prop or a costume because I'll fit into the character right away. - It looks like the eating contest is ready right now. - Alright.

Come on. You really do. - Where is the lamb sauce? But even if my appearance said otherwise, I was still a complete novice at baking, so we had to start from the beginning, with our plan to first make a traditional butter croissant from scratch so we could learn some of the fundamentals and then make one of Black Box's signature viral croissant cubes and after that, once I had a little more knowledge, I made my own

custom

croissant. And the first step in our croissant-making process was mise en place, or measuring all of our ingredients. - It's the perfect height for you because I can't reach it. - Oh, okay, this is what I'm here for. - Yes. - Which to make a croissant meant that we had to measure out a good amount of milk and then some bread flour on wheels. - Too much bread, too angry. - Derived from bread.

Which gives your baked goods a little more structure and chewiness compared to all-purpose flour. However, it also contains a lot of all-purpose flour. Yeast, sugar, salt. - It's the way of life down here. - Do you mean up here? - Up, up, up here. - A mile high in the air. And a good amount of butter. And unlike other dough recipes, croissant dough generally needs to be cold for most of its construction, so these things will go in and out of the freezer. - I like these flaps. - Looks like a 70's bedroom. Now Black box Bakery is actually a space themed bakery because not only are the cakes good, but their goal is to push the boundaries of baked goods and experiment with new and unique takes on the ones. classic cakes that we all know and love. - We take it so that space is infinite.

I mean, there's a lot of things to discover and we feel like we can do that with baking, where we just want to go on an adventure and see what we can get. Apparently, they also really like aliens and conspiracy theories. - Very good, conspiracy bakery. - Yes, that's fun for us. - Ha! People in Denver take the conspiracies I've heard very seriously. Conspiracies and croissants. - Where is the Denver airport box? - Yes, exactly. And conspiracies at airports, don't forget them. - I mean, is the horse haunted? -He killed his creator. Yes, good. Well. There you go. - Yes, then that is not a conspiracy, what really happened. - That's true.

That's true. Well. -Yes. And although Black Box Bakery is, by all indications, an original bakery, Arielle and her team are highly trained pastry chefs, which makes sense. To push the limits of croissants, you have to be good at making them. And all of this combined has led them to creations like the maple sweet potato spaceship, croissant ice cream cones, eggnog cruffin, cheezit croissant, and mishmish. It is not yet known what exactly that is. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Basic croissants first, trip to pastry shop 51 later. So, with all our ingredients measured out and our butter diced until satisfactory, or rather diced until satisfactory.

Butter Henge. - Butter Henge. It kind of fits into the conspiracy bakery. - Yes, they are like a conspiracy (unintelligible). - What is the meaning of Stonehenge? Finally it was time to mix all our ingredients in this giant industrial mixer. Hello. Just open and pull? Well. - Controlled discharge. - It is controlled discharge. Yes. - A controlled landfill. Let's see how we do it. And she's a pretty impressive beast, devouring all of our ingredients. Somewhere down there is milk. - Yes. - And then turn them into dough. Uh oh, okay. Yes. Look at that corkscrew. And as this mound of dough forms in front of me...

She will be mixing. Look at it. It looks fluffy and bouncy. I think we were starting to face the looming question of how do we turn this dough into a delicate cake? Can? - Yeah. - Oh, that's pretty stretchy. Now, croissant dough is a leavened dough like bread, so the dough itself isn't really very special. Oh Lord. - Yes, it will take some strength. - Oh Lord. - You can even see it a little bit. - Well. Yes. The sawing is working. - Yes. - For example, if you just baked one of these lumps, it wouldn't be a croissant, it would just become bread.

It turns out that the key element of the croissant is that you sheet the dough, which simplified means folding butter into the dough several times to create very thin layers of butter and dough. And when you place the laminated dough in the oven, the butter will melt and create steam, separating the layers and leaving you with dozens of flaky, airy, buttery croissant layers. And if you're an experienced pastry chef like Arielle, you expect a nice, uniform honeycomb structure like this. So to start our long croissant process, I had to make sure each piece of dough was shaped like a nice orb by folding it over on itself. - So you don't have random pieces everywhere. - That seems fine to me. - So what you're going to do is basically attract him to you. - Hmm.

And apparently my interpretation of Arielle's instructions here included a hip thrust for some reason. (everyone laughs) - That was just a hump, Saf. (all laughing) - Sorry, I'm just trying to get into that. (all laughing) And although after watching other people do this step, I think some of what I was doing was correct, I was simply using too much of my pelvis. That? Why are you looking at me? That? There was a little more donut daddy in my technique than I expected, but once we had some cute little types of dough... - It looks beautiful. - Hey, well, that's pretty good. (hitting with hands) - Bongos. - The time has come to start flattening them into sheets. - This looks like a face, little alien. - Oh. - Oh Lord. - They are everywhere. - This video will be deleted. (everyone laughs) - Now, if you watch a tutorial for making croissants at home, this is usually where the rolling pin will come out, but one of the advantages of hanging out with a professional pastry chef is that they know very well how to make pastries. equipment. - This is the laminator, also known as a laminator. - I love it. - And your job is the laminator. - I'm the laminator. - It's like a Denzel Washington movie. (all laughing) - "The Laminator." - "The Laminator". - My friends, this is an electric dough sheeter and it will flatten our dough in no time.

I feel like this is a very powerful position. You know what I mean? I'll show you a little bit of this, a little bit of that, some of that action in the checkout aisle. (laughs) So after pouring a little flour on our hunched lumps... What do you think? - Even better. A bit better? - Yes. Does speed help? We put our dough in the sheeter and begin to flatten. - At your signal, prepare. Ir. - And I think the sheeter is like a reverse roller, since it has its own pin that goes down and a conveyor belt that moves underneath...

A little to the left... Which accelerates the dough from one side. from the laminator to the other... A little to the right... Flattening it in the process. And once we had some relatively flat sheets of dough... Oh, it fits. If it fits, he sits down. Come on. - Forward. - Forward. They needed to rest and cool for a while in the refrigerator, after which... Oh yeah, it's soft... We were ready to take out some chunks of butter and start laminating. They are slabs. iPad kids will be like. (everyone laughs) Now, to laminate this dough, we start by flattening it even more.

Skinny legend, this dough... And then also flatten our butter iPads to match the thickness of the dough. And once that was done, we placed our butter in the middle of the dough and wrapped it like a Pop-Tart. - So we basically just want the dough to come together and not overlap, right? -Good. And once we had this dough sandwich, butter dough, we put it back in the sheeter and started flattening again. - Oh. - It's getting quite long. - It's going to be longer. - Until it basically became a long, flat scarf. Then, to build those signature croissant layers, we folded our scarf over itself once and then twice, which quadrupled our layers of dough, butter, and dough.

Oh. You're folding it like a sheet. - Exactly. - Then flipping and flattening our sheet in the other direction. ♪ There it goes ♪ ♪ There it goes again ♪ - And then he folds it back on itself. This time to triple our already multiplied layers. - Layers upon layers upon layers. - They exist. - Layers upon layers upon layers. - Yes. - And this relatively manageable stack of layers is called a book, which once created, had to sit in the refrigerator for a while before being ready to be used. - Try to get under it. - I'm fine. I'm in. - Perfect. - But his future was not written, because he was about to become a whole pile of croissant. - Good night, sweet prince. (both laughing) - Now, after our book was completely rested and ready to come out of the refrigerator, we then flattened it one more time on the laminator to make sure all of our layers were as thin as possible.

And when it became a scarf again, we rolled our book turned into parchment on this rod. Oh! That's great. - Yes. - And then he spread it out on our table like a beautiful, tasty roll of toilet paper. Oh oh oh. Oh. Final photo. This is where things get a little complicated, as Arielle pulled out a series of baking torture devices, including what looked like a tandem pizza cutter. - I want to play a game? (everyone laughs) - POV, you're a pastry chef and this is "Saw". - Cut our dough into strips and then take out an X-acto knife and a ruler to cut those strips into triangles.

And you have to be pretty quick with this so that all the butter in your layers doesn't start to melt. Boom makes the dynamite. Come on. Let's go guys. I'm just yelling at the bakery. Things are going well. - They like. I can see. (Safiya laughs) - And once we had all our triangles, we had to stretch them into long tails of dough. - This thumb is the stretcher. - Well. - And I'll just let it go. - How that? - Nice. - Well. Because it's finally time to roll our dough into that iconic half-moon croissant shape.

Check out those kelp forest vibes. Now our idea here was to fold our croissant dough once and then twice to create the little feet on either side of the crescent and then make a little movement to get the roll to actually start. Then Arielle takes the dough and rolls the rest of it with her fingers. - And near. - Nice. Oh God, look at him. - That is beautiful. - Hey. And as a pastry apprentice, I had to try to roll at least a few myself. Stretch, bend. - Yes. - Second fold. - Yes. And then... - And then little. (blowing) Now, in my defense, this isn't supposed to be very easy.

Oh Lord. She's not pretty, but she's on a roll. - It's not that bad. - Yes, no, not bad. - Have you seen worse things? - I've seen much worse things. Yes. - Okay, I'm in the middle. - Yes. - That's what I like to hear. -And while I wasn't officially the worst at this, there were a couple of things that tripped me up. - I'll go there. - Okay, that's fair. - Yes. - We'll meet like here. (laughs) Plus it's hard to keep the stretch and spiral movement totally uniform as you go... Okay, that's not good, but I'm going to keep trying...

After a long day making dough, too It was kind of warm and my hot fingers were causing some of the butter in the top layers of our croissants to melt. I think my hands are warm. - Yes. - Everything's a little melted. Leaving my croissants shiny and with fingerprints on them, which is not ideal. - You know what they say about hot hands, right? - That? What do they say? Bad croissants? - Yeah. (everyone laughs) - Hey, the first one was great (everyone laughs) - But Arielle gave at least some of my croissants a passing grade. - The shape looks good. - Thank you, chef. - You are welcome. - Thank you, cook. - Thank you, cook. - So that's something.

I guess we'll see how they turn out. They don't stand out that much. - No. - That was noticeable from afar. It's more of a Monet situation. Then they will rest overnight in the freezer. Okay, now that we've all learned, including myself, what classic croissants are and how to make them, it's time to broaden our horizons a little and take on the bucket. Now, I think part of the reason cubed croissants became so viral is because not only are they eye-catching, but they also provide plenty of room to fill the croissant with different delicious innards, which look incredibly satisfying when you open them. .

It's like a gift. And the cubes also provide a lot more surface area to make cool decorations on whichever side you decide is the top one. And so, for our first foray into cubing, Arielle decided that she would show me how to make one of Black Box's signature chocolate and mulled wine crupes, which sounded pretty good. - The next. - The next. Here it comes. - Other. - Other. Now, to begin with, the process of making croissant dough is the same: wrapping the butter inside the dough and then flattening and folding it over and over again.

You don't need me to explain lamination again, I'm sure you've had enough of that, but I think since these croissants are not crescents, it's best to make sure they have the flaky, buttery layers of laminated dough. the key to keeping them croissants. Some haters might say they still aren't, but hey, there are always people who fear true innovation. I'm right? More. ♪ Give me, give me more ♪ - More, more, more. - But once we flattened our book to Arielle's satisfaction... - And stop. There is. - Instead of cutting it now into strips to roll it into half moons, we prefer to roll the dough completely.

So? - Yes. To create like a long, rolled loaf of dough. - Well. Hurrah. -How do we feel about it? - I feel good. - Great, the vibrations of the logs intensify. - Vibration registration. - And then we measure and cut our log into even small Tootsie Rolls, which will fit inside the square molds Black Box uses and expand to become crubes. Oh, that was amazing. I love that. And that's all you have to do to prepare the croquettes before baking them. There's a good feeling to it, like I'm overcoming something. Because the mulled wine part will come with the fillings and decorations.

In short, the dough rolling process is still complex, but this part is much simpler than the traditional butter croissant. And even better for someone with hot hands like me... I'm a little obsessed with the side. (Both laugh) Now for cube number two, the custom crube. Now Arielle and the Black Box team have made many different cubes before, from birthday cubes to pebble cubes with fruit and a whole collection of Halloween cubes. So when we thought about doing a custom bucket together, we wanted to go with something they hadn't necessarily done before, that wasn't full on Halloween, but still had a little Saf x Black Box branding.

Very similar to the Gothic style. And I saw on their Instagram that they had experimented with a black striped croissant before, which seemed like a perfect dash of dark aesthetic. Kind of a little menacing, a little elegant. So we decided to go with a black and white striped cube-shaped croissant. And once again, the dough rolling process was pretty much the same with one major exception, because to make our black stripe, we had to bake it into our dough... Hey, how are you? This is my dough hook. - He's very crazy. Yes. - It's beautiful. - Kinky Captain Hook vibes. (everyone laughs) So we combined some leftover dough with some black food coloring to make some goth dough that we could use.

This is the vibe. - Yes. - This is the vibe I was looking for. Although to completely saturate the dough... Oh my goodness. Oh, wow. - Oh, wow. - It's crazy in there. We had to let Kinky Captain Hook get away with it for a while... It looks like an apostrophe, it looks like a comma. But the results were worth the wait, and after some time in the refrigerator... Boom! Look at this... It was time to go back to the sheeter to stretch our gothic dough enough to cover our book of laminated dough... Boom! And after we spread our book with flour... - It's like one of those Turkish massages. - Yes, it's a hammam.

Ty, I'm the big Turk. This is my victim. - Me. - (laughs) You in the future. It was time to send our good book through the sheeter to flatten, roll, roll out, and then log our custom dough once again. So this is what I'm talking about. This is what I'm talking about. The vision is a "Beetlejuice" croissant, a supernatural and underworld environment. - I love it. - Zoot suit. Now after cutting the stripes off the sides, it looked really good. Boom! - Oh, damn. That's what I'm talking about. That's what I'm talking about. It looks like a Swiss roll...

The black dough tried to give us a little trouble by getting smeared near the top of our rolls no matter what cutting method we tried. - Sprinkle a little, sprinkle a little, sprinkle and chop. - But Arielle, a baker after my heart, wasn't going to let the stains go without a fight. Do I try to peel it? -Yes. And she very gently pushed the layer of black dough up to make sure that all our striped spirals were nice and visible. You can see it well? - Yes. Solid. - Cool. Just a little surgery. And once we've perfected each roll to our satisfaction...

I mean, it's a hand-massaged croissant, let me tell you. We packed our gothic cubes on a tray and put them in the freezer to cool overnight. Now, we obviously can't add the decorations to our cubes until they are baked, but another key feature of the croissant cube is that they are filled with filling. And Arielle and her team do all the fillings in-house. So I guess, as a pastry apprentice, I had to make some too. And for our mulled wine bucket, they look like a festive flavor setting with a mulled wine ganache and orange diplomatic cream.

Now diplomatic cream is actually a combination of custard, which is a thick custard, and whipped cream, making it the perfect medium-rare texture, light and still structured. I promise I won't lick it. - No, no, yes. - Although it's dangerously close to my mouth. (laughs) Which sounded amazing, but Arielle also had me whip the whipped cream by hand. - It's a shit thing to do. (Both laugh) I guess we didn't have a machine for this. You can see it well? - Hey, it'll be there soon. - I think I'm getting confused. And we complete all this with a little cinnamon and a little orange oil to become a pleasant citrus and winter diplomat.

And then, as for our mulled wine ganache, flavor from the land of my town, Denmark, Arielle gets quite molecular. Oh. -Yes. This is biological, honey... And she uses some pure glucose in her recipe. Oh God... Oh God... Oh, I love it. - Yes. It looks like glass. What the hell? Which literally looked exactly like clear slime and felt like that too. Then all we needed was some heavy cream, dark chocolate, and of course our mulled wine, which we stirred together for a perfect holiday treat. We filmed this in January and now it's April, but you know, Christmas can be any time of the year if you believe it.

And then as for what would go in our custom cubes, I personally love all fresh flavors, like tea and herbaceous ones like mint, lavender, roses, and, well, tea. And Arielle makes an Earl Gray whipped ganache, which she suggested we combine with elderflower-flavored honey to make a sort of London fog latte in the form of a semi-solid cream on the inside of our elegant black-striped croissant cube. . Sounds like heaven to me. Our honey, we were going to try it the next day, but as for our Earl Gray ganache, Arielle once again brought out the glucose and another crazy sugar, trimoline...

Oh, what the hell? - Yes, very different. - That? What is this? Followed by some heavy cream and some pretty Earl Gray tea bags. - Oh, here we are making a tea king. - Yes, like a rat king, but it's tea. - Oh. (all laughing) - I like that. Alright. - And a generous serving of white chocolate chips. And to really bring out the flavors... Do we need salt? - Yes. - In here? - Yes. You're doing very well. (all laughing) - That was your final test. (all laughing) - Look, I was finally becoming a useful baking apprentice - That happens. - I love it. - I love it. - Yes.

Also, I appreciate the hand mixer that showed up to combine all of our ingredients and really made me feel like I was back in a soap art tutorial. - This is going to taste good. I feel like there have been so many steps with these croissants that I forgot that they will be delicious. - Yes. (laughs) - We have been working. Yeah,more like the bakery directed me, but I certainly raised my knowledge from zero to something. So big thanks to Black Box Bakery for teaching me a few things. But I think if I want out-of-this-world croissants anytime soon, I may have to return to the croissant capital of the world, Denver. - Are you happy to be in Denver? (Safiya laughs) - Yes. - Thank you guys very much for watching.

If you like that video, make sure to hit the like button. And if you want to see more videos like this, be sure to hit the subscribe button. Here are our short forms/social media handles. And if you're in Denver or have any need to come to Denver, check out Black Box. And with that, I'll see you next time.