The secret to having a successful croissant is making small batches, step-by-step, slowly, precisely, over several days…. in a cool environment. Plus, passion——passion for making a perfectly formed, flaky, fluffy crescent.
GREAT BARRINGTON — According to my 18-year-old granddaughter, the best places to get a proper croissant are Paris; New York City; Fort Lee, N.J.; and Great Barrington! Custard Pilot Plant Lab Scale
How does our town’s croissant receive a starred review from a kid who wrote a college-admissions essay on “How to Bake a Perfect Croissant”?
Patrizia (Paty) Barbagallo, the owner and principal croissant-maker, learned her craft in Europe from her Italian mother, a restaurateur. For her, croissant-making takes patience and the right ingredients, plus the avoidance of short-cuts.
Even more important is the baker’s ability to delay gratification. If there’s any departure from the steps in the process, the croissant will be too mushy, or too soft, or too buttery, or too heavy, or too sweet, or too salty, or otherwise not just right.
According to Paty, a just-right croissant is crispy on the outside and soft on the inside. If filled, the croissant is creamy.
A Pixie croissant has three main ingredients: two kinds of butter from Cabot’s in Vermont (one with higher butterfat content than the other) and King Arthur flour. Plus: water, salt, milk, yeast, sugar.
“A lot of bakers use margarine to cut costs, which affects the flavor. No margarine or other fake fats ever cross the transom at Pixie—real butter makes all the difference!”
For Pixie customers, Paty makes six kinds of croissants:
plain (natural croissant) almond (almonds) chocolate (pain au chocolat) ham with gruyere cheese (ham cheese) raisin (raisin bread) apricot swirl (apricot whirlwind)
Her personal favorite: plain…no butter, no jam, no nothing!
Paty began baking at age 10 and never stopped. In 2020 she moved to the Berkshires from Westchester, N.Y., baking every day to occupy her time while isolating during COVID.
Paty attempted to donate what she baked to a local food pantry,but she was unsuccessful because her kitchen was not “certified commercial.” She says, “Trashing baked goods everyday was upsetting.”
As the pandemic wore on, Paty realized she did not wish to return to teaching high school French. It was time for her to change careers and to do what she loved.
So she did in-depth research, consulted some professional chefs who ran commercial kitchens, and Pixie Boulangerie became a reality.
Croissant-making is a two-day process requiring:
Day 1: “We make the dough, the tempera.”
Distemper: Croissant dough before the lamination process.
In making the dough, it’s important to keep in mind what Julia Child had to say: “You are the boss of that dough!”
After sprinkling a bit of flour on a wood surface, the croissant-maker punches and pounds the dough, then uses a rolling pin to roll it out. The dough is rolled and rolled several times and folded and unfolded. This is done quickly and with assurance! Otherwise, the dough will not perform properly in the oven.
Next step: Preparing the butter, beurrage
This step involves hammering the butter with a rolling pin, a technique known as beurrage, to flatten the butter and make it malleable.
Paty says she tried buying the butter in flat rectangles, already hammered. But the croissants were not the same…not up to her standards.
The dough is left overnight in the fridge to ferment.
Day 2: “We laminate, and we sheet.” Lamination is the art of locking the hammered butter into the dough, la détrempe, creating the layers.
Sheeting is rolling the dough and the butter together in unison. It’s done with a sheeter machine, making for a quick process in order to keep the dough and butter cold.
After the dough goes through the sheeting process three times, the baker quickly puts the laminated dough into the freezer.
“We prepare the fillings.” The fillings, such as frangipane (almond cream), are made. The dough remains in the freezer.
“We shape all the dough.” The dough is shaped to make six kinds of croissants. Once shaped, the croissants are frozen, and they stay on baking sheets. Every night, the number of croissants needed for the next day’s sale are pulled from the freezer and put into the fridge.
Days 3, 4, 5, 6: “We bake.” The next morning at 5 am, the croissants are egg-washed,proofed (they rest), and they are baked with steam.
Pixie uses large cookie sheets lined with parchment—different sheets for each kind, which allows for varying baking times and for easy sorting on baker’s racks.
Croissants by the Numbers (per week): Butter: 12,620 grams (28 pounds) Flour: 12,230 grams Best-seller: ham and gruyere Number sold: 500-600 Time in oven: 15–20 minutes Cost: $3.00 to $7.00 each
Questions for Paty: What’s your favorite? “I like my almond croissants—crispy outside and creamy inside with our homemade frangipane.”
What’s the difference between a Swiss and a French croissant? “No difference. The only difference among all the croissants is the maker and the ingredients used. The secret to having a successful croissant is making small batches, step-by-step, slowly, precisely, over several days…. in a cool environment. Plus, passion—passion for making a perfectly formed, flaky, fluffy crescent.”
Everyone has something to say about baking—from my granddaughter, to celebrity chefs, to the grandma next door:
And my own favorite, from my Yiddish-speaking grandfather: “Everyone is kneaded out of the same dough, but not baked in the same oven.” – Yiddish Proverb
Pixie Boulangerie is located in the Flying Church building on Main Street in Great Barrington. Photo by Marcie Setlow
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