![Chocolate Layer Cake](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2023/10/27/multimedia/27cakerex-plzm/27cakerex-plzm-mediumThreeByTwo440.jpg?width=1280&quality=75&auto=webp)
Pain au Chocolat
![Pain au Chocolat](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2021/04/07/dining/06croissantsrex2-pains/merlin_184842177_c524b2b7-10cf-40de-a9a6-e536ae63c3d6-articleLarge.jpg?width=1280&quality=75&auto=webp)
- Total Time
- About 4 hours, largely unattended
- Rating
- Notes
- Read community notes
Advertisement
Ingredients
- Croissant dough, rolled out to a 15-by-16-inch slab, chilled (See Notes)
- All-purpose flour, for rolling
- 20chocolate croissant sticks, or 4 ounces semisweet bar chocolate, cut crosswise into 20 even pieces
- 1large egg yolk
- 1tablespoon heavy cream
Preparation
- Step 1
Arrange racks in the upper third and lower thirds of the oven. Bring a skillet of water to a simmer over medium-high heat. Transfer the skillet to the floor of the oven and close the door. (The steam released inside the oven will create an ideal proofing environment for the pains au chocolat.) Line two rimmed baking sheets with parchment paper and set aside.
- Step 2
Remove the slab of dough from the refrigerator and let sit for 5 minutes at room temperature. Unwrap (save the plastic for proofing) and place on a very lightly floured surface. If the dough has shrunk during chilling, roll it out again to a slab that’s 16 inches long and 15 inches wide. Dust off any excess flour with a pastry brush.
- Step 3
Use a wheel cutter to trim ½ inch of dough from all four sides, straightening and squaring them off, creating a slab that’s 15 inches long by 14 inches wide. Using a ruler, cut the slab lengthwise into 5 equal strips each measuring 3 inches wide. Cut each strip in half crosswise, creating 10 rectangles.
- Step 4
Working one rectangle at a time, place a stick of chocolate along one of the shorter sides, leaving about a 1-inch border. Fold the pastry over the chocolate until it’s wrapped around one time, then tuck another bar of chocolate into the fold. Wrap the pastry around the second bar of chocolate and continue to roll until you have a snug spiral. Transfer the pain au chocolat to a prepared baking sheet, resting it on the seam. Repeat with the remaining dough and chocolate, dividing between the baking sheets and spacing evenly. Very loosely cover with plastic wrap so the pastries have some room to expand.
- Step 5
Open the oven and stick your hand inside — it should be humid but not hot, as the water in the skillet will have cooled. You want the pains au chocolat to proof at 70 to 75 degrees. (Any hotter and the butter will melt, leading to a denser pastry.) Gently place the baking sheets inside the oven and let the pastries proof until they’re doubled in size, extremely puffy, and jiggle delicately on the baking sheet, 2 to 2½ hours.
- Step 6
Remove the baking sheets from the oven and carefully uncover them. Transfer to the refrigerator and chill for 20 minutes while you heat the oven. Remove the skillet from the oven and heat to 375 degrees.
- Step 7
In a small bowl, stir the yolk and heavy cream until streak-free. Remove the baking sheets from the refrigerator and use a pastry brush to gently brush each pain au chocolat with the yolk mixture. Transfer the sheets to the oven and bake for 20 minutes. Rotate the baking sheets and switch racks, and continue to bake until the pains au chocolat are deeply browned, another 10 to 15 minutes. Remove from the oven and let cool completely on the baking sheets.
- For the dough, follow the Croissants recipe through Step 16.
- Pains au chocolat are best within an hour or two of baking. After that, revive them by warming in a 350-degree oven for 5 to 8 minutes. Keep wrapped airtight at room temperature.
Private Notes
Cooking Notes
Absolutely fabulous say all of my 'victims'. Better than any bakery said one. Clearly all the work is worth the wait for these pastries. Will willingly do it again just to provide a wee bit of joy during these troubling times.
Turned out great the first try! I did even longer cold rises in the refrigerator (because of work schedule) and didn’t seem to make a difference. Do not underestimate how much they’ll proof and expand in the oven; I only had one full baking sheet so I tried doing 7 on the sheet and 3 in a cake pan. Ended up having sides touching; all worked out though!
I just made these and they are delicious. I used dark chocolate chips instead of batons, they were rather large so I put 8/10 in each croissant. I baked on cookie sheets, don’t be like me, use rimmed sheets as there will be butter overflow. Overall, a great set of instructions and a fun weekend project!
Had a bit of trouble with the dough. Perhaps overproofed them. Butter leaked. Do you know…they were still amazing?
Just made these, they were phenomenal. I folded the croissant dough one extra turn before rolling out after reading the comments on the other recipe. I just used bar chocolate broken into pieces and it worked great.
I wish I could reconcile a recipe like Claire's, which uses a strong bread flour, with the recipe by Cedric Grolet which uses T45 pastry flour. There is a huge difference between these flours. Grolet also has access to special dry butter ('beurre patissier' 'beurre de tourage') which is somewhat hard to find in the U.S. (still). Too much moisture in the butter makes the pastry rise too high, too fast and then the layers collapse.
I have made both the basic croissant recipe and this one now and in both cases, the most amazing results. Tear-inducing deliciousness. I used Trader Joe’s hot chocolate sticks in mine. They are a bit big on their own, but cut in half they are perfect - both in flavor, length, and price!
I may have rushed it, but cutting a bar of chocolate into batons turned into a crumbly mess, even when using a sharp knife and the scoring method described in the video. Easy enough to nestle the shards into the dough when forming, but next time will definitely be ordering batons online to avoid the hassle.
I have made this recipe 4 times and only once did I have anything less than ideal! I recommend weighing your ingredients and being careful about the heat of the oven for the proof.
One heck of a Memorial Day weekend baking project right here! Claire's video and written instructions were enough to make my very first at-home croissants a success. Never imagined I would be able to make these at home with such a tender interior crumb and exterior crunch-shatter. Of course, I'll still get the masterful versions from, say, Konbi and Tartine, this just makes me appreciate the pros even more. Thanks for helping me take these beauties over the finish line.
I am still intimidated by the croissant dough process, but I used these instructions to make pain au chocolat with quick puff pastry. There is a bulk food store in my town that sells the batons, so that is what I use for the chocolate. The pastry is not quite as delicate because it doesn’t rise as much, but they are relatively quick and still delicious!
For my first time, I’m very happy with how they came out. Probably will cut a little more narrow than 3” in the future because they are enormous. A reminder to be patient; I set mine in the oven with the skillet too soon and a lot of butter melted out. Trust the process, they look and taste great, and use good chocolate. I sprang for Belgian sticks (Amazon) and they taste like the real deal.
I just made these and they are delicious. I used dark chocolate chips instead of batons, they were rather large so I put 8/10 in each croissant. I baked on cookie sheets, don’t be like me, use rimmed sheets as there will be butter overflow. Overall, a great set of instructions and a fun weekend project!
Absolutely fabulous say all of my 'victims'. Better than any bakery said one. Clearly all the work is worth the wait for these pastries. Will willingly do it again just to provide a wee bit of joy during these troubling times.
Looks like I'm the first person to have baked these! The directions were very good for both this recipe and the dough. I started the proof in the humid oven but then took them out after an hour because I was nervous the butter was beginning to ooze out (so be careful of that). Either than that the croissants were perfect! Very flaky and they looked beautiful. Just like what you can get at the bakery.
Turned out great the first try! I did even longer cold rises in the refrigerator (because of work schedule) and didn’t seem to make a difference. Do not underestimate how much they’ll proof and expand in the oven; I only had one full baking sheet so I tried doing 7 on the sheet and 3 in a cake pan. Ended up having sides touching; all worked out though!
Advertisement