I have been craving croissants since we came back from Paris so I had to try something similar at home, not the classical flaky ones (I still have a long journey until there) but a much easier version, with a super fluffy texture given by the soft Muller sour cream and some biceps workouts, yep it’s kneading time, a great exercise this time of the year. Added orange zest for more seasonal flavour and some apricot jam inside, I made a few with dark chocolate as well, but you can choose plenty of other seasonal fillings, make sure to use thick ones. If you want to watch our video recipe as well you can click here.

Ingredients for the fluffy „croissants”:

450-500g flour

60g sugar rubbed with the zest of an orange

15g vanilla sugar

5g salt

150ml warm milk

100g sour cream Muller

30g fresh yeast

3 egg yolks

50g melted butter

Use a thick jam for the filling, chocolate or any other thick fillings

One egg and 2 tsp milk for brushing

Almond flakes and powdered sugar

In a bowl mix the flour with the sugar (make sure to rub it with orange zest first), vanilla sugar, and salt. Warm up the milk just a little bit, make sure it is not hot and dissolve the yeast in it. Put the milk over the dry ingredients, the sour cream and the egg yolks and mix with a wooden spoon then start to me some muscle and knead the dough on a lightly floured surface. It will need about 15 minutes of kneading until it becomes soft and elastic, at the end start adding the melted butter little by little and incorporate it by kneading.

Put the dough in a large bowl greased with butter, grease the dough with a bit of melted butter as well, cover it with plastic foil then leave it to rise in a warm place until it triples its volume, it might take around 2 hours. I used the rising function of the oven and it took about an hour. Once the dough has risen split it in half, roll each ball of dough in a square around 35X35 cm large, trim the edges, cut them in half, then cut each half diagonally.

Place your filing at the longer edge and start rolling (you can check my video for that). try to make two croissants out of the remaining edges. Place the „croissants” on a baking tray with parchment paper, cover them with cling film and let them rise in a warm place for about 30 min. After that brush them with the mixture of egg and milk, sprinkle almond flakes and bake them in the preheated oven at 170 Celsius for about 20 min or until nice and golden. Don’t worry if the jam wasn’t thick enough and some got lost in the process, you can pouch more into them or just cut them in half and spread some more jam.