Name: How to make croissants - The Victorian Way
Uploaded: 2025-11-26T17:55:15.000Z
Duration: 7 min 18 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Just in time to catch me making croissants.

Enriched bread rolls, very popular at breakfast.

For this recipe you will need flour, yeast, salt, water, milk, butter and an egg.

It's a simple enriched dough, half milk and half water, although some bakers add an egg or butter to their dough as well.

This is a bowl of flour with my yeast mixed in the middle with some milk.

I had Sylvia do it about an hour ago and put it by the fire.

Now going to add some salt, butter and tepid water.

I'm using German yeast, which is compressed into blocks, but

you could use yeast from the brewer or the baker if you like.

With houses like this one, you probably buy your bread in, but

if you work in a rural household, then you'll need to know how to make it yourself and that includes yeast management.

Now that my dough has come together, I'm going to knead it.

When the girls first start, I always get them to knead the dough for precisely 20 minutes by the clock, but

Once they've got used to making it, then they'll soon be able to feel when the dough is ready.

If you work in a house that makes bread regularly, you probably have a standing kneading trough which is much bigger than this one.

And while all the kitchen maids can make bread, as can Fanny the dairy maid, I think it's more economical to buy in from the baker.

Although you do have to be careful where you buy your bread.

I've heard horror stories of there being plaster of Paris in them, or chalk, or even human bones.

Of course, it's much worse in the cities.

It's not just the bakers you have to be careful of.

You have to make sure your flour supplier is trustworthy as well.

All sorts of things can be put in flour, as you might imagine.

As this is Vienna bread, I'm using Vienna flour.

We although it actually comes from Hungary or Romania, Canadian flour is very good as well.

I'm going to put it into a bowl and cover it with a damp cloth and let it prove for about two hours.

Now that my dough is doubled in size, it's time to shape it.

Croissant is crescent in French and there are lots of different things sold under that name.

Strutt tells me that crescent shaped biscuits as well as Vienna bread rolls like these are very popular in Paris, and

They're also sold as crescents in Austria.

You can shape your croissants any way you like, so long as they're crescent shaped.

You can plait them, then make them into a crescent, or if you're short of time, you can roll them up like a sausage and then make them into a crescent.

I'm now going to give them an egg wash, let them prove for a little while and then put them in the oven.

My crescents are cooked and have a perfect texture.

They need to be served fresh, so I've plated them ready to go up.

They are the perfect accompaniment to one of Mrs. Warwick's famous fruit preserves.

And there we are, croissants or Vienna bread rolls, ideal to be served for breakfast with bacon and eggs, jam and honey.