Three Siblings Kitchen (TSK)

Hey friend!

Oofda! I am so behind on my baking endeavors, or at least in documenting them. After a long day of croissant-ing I think I will remember all these tests or bombass ideas but that’s wildly optimistic.

Over the years I have tried to get better at taking progress photos with my notes on all my testers but while I take the photos, they are usually in bad lighting & on dingey parchment paper or dirty tables. Future me regrets not taking those cutsie instagram worthy photos but I think I need to get over that. Maybe instagram just needs the crinkly brown parchment paper exposure already… seriously, are people wasting fresh parchment paper to get cleaner photos or what?

One of my most recent testers, I was attempting a red white & blue croissant. Up to this point I had never done a blue bicolor croissant so the hope was to have blue on the outside. Blue is better than red anyway. Suprise suprise, they were going to be for the Fourth of July! The idea was to roll red (or blue) inside the 3rd pass of the croissant dough & the other color would remain on the outside. This way I could get a good swirl of colors on the inside for a plain croissant & maybe on chocolate croissants, I could get the fancy scoring on top so you can see both colors through scoring the top. Photos should help this explanation hopefully…

I have been doing croissant mixing, laminating, shaping & baking for so long that I could do it in my sleep & I kind of despise it now honestly. Its so repetitive & boring until I get to do fun things like this! I get giddy & excited for the whole process. Planning, starting & impatient for the final bake. Finding time to develop things like this can be hard too so its wonderful when the opportunities finally present themself. Maybe someday I can be a croissant consultant & just help bakeries develop fun, new & realistic products. Or maybe I will just open my own bakery where I only ever make the wild, colorful, weird things that bring me joy.

Anyway, I had to wait a week or so to actually bake these because croissants are a while goddamn process & its not a good idea to try to make them start to finish in one day & because I was doing these at work – I was off for the weekend probably. I just remember it was annoying to not be able to see the result immediately.

When I arrive at work, I get to see all of the things I make in their final proofing right before they do in the oven.. it also meant I could get some photos before they got all brown in the oven. Very often, people will only post photos of the unbaked products because they look so much more impressive at this stage. Whenever people post their rainbow croissants, I always go on to look for the baked version because I will be 10 times more impressed if it stays as impressive at that stage. I bet if I only ever saw the baked versions of things from a consumer side rather than from a producer, I would be so impressed & naive to how much cooler it was unbaked.

It was nice to see my things at this stage though, so vibrant! The red exterior gave me USA vibes, the blue exterior felt more like France vibes though too which is great because Bastille day is not to far after the Fourth of July.

Next up was to bake… Typically I am used to egg washing the outside so you get the nice golden color & shine we all want to see on pastries BUT I also understand why some bakeries dont egg wash & instead brush glazes on the outside to make the color pop more. Personally I still egg wash because it appeals more to me as food than as just an art display. I prefer the flavor & appearance to match even if they might seem a little dull than to make it perfectly pretty but weirder to eat.

I dont think this photo shows it incredibly well but the blue exterior came out looking kind of green. Im not really sure why this happened but if I make them again I will probably start by using a lighter blue dye or less of it anyway. I was a little let down but it means further testing & not just giving it up all together. My twistys came apart but in my own defense I had just learned how to make these recently… and made them incorrectly/not well. I would try those again because I think they do have real potential as well.

For the final photo… what you’ve been still reading for… drum roll please!

Seeing this slice make me want to do so many color options, every combination & even the whole rainbow maybe?! That is a whole other game though, maybe someday I will try it. Super exclusive rainbow spirals, very limited numbers and for a million dollars each. Its things like this sweet spiral that make me excited to be baking for a living & give me something to look forward to while I am otherwise doing extremely repetitive work. I hope to do more of these someday, specific colors for peoples birthdays or events. I think they could be really fun!

Until next time,

Jamie