Saying yes to complicated.

I know. The baking. I said, "No more baking" about a week ago. I lied.

My friend Mel texted me about participating in a Zoom baking class. The teacher is a friend Robin who used to live in Portland and now lives in Chicago. The recipe? Croissants.

Croissants? Holy hell. Complicated. Time-consuming. And I said yes.

Little did I know when I said yes that I would be in full grieving after losing my friend Diana to cancer the day before. She liked my cooking. Years ago she convinced me to make the entire Gourmet Magazine Easter menu saying that she would help. Her idea of helping was watching me cook. And we laughed about that for years. Staying busy kept me from curling into a ball.

Then I got the recipe. Two pages. So many steps and phases it made my head spin. I thought, "this will either be an epic fail or a great success. I'm happy with something in between."

Friday night we gathered on Zoom to prepare the dough and the butter block. This took less than an hour. I had a small disaster with my butter block (hence the band-aid of painters tape on the edge) but in general, I was off to a good start.

Saturday morning at 7:30 am, the process began again. I got up early to prep my workspace. I had to find the rulers. Clean the work area. Set up my laptop so I could follow along - thanks to the complete works of Shakespeare and a couple of cookbooks. It was a reasonable amount of prep - like being back in cooking school.

Now the hard part - getting the dough into shape and making the first book. That's getting the butter block and the dough into one unified state to create the lovely flakey layers. It's a process of bashing the dough to avoid developing the gluten. Constantly measuring so you get to just the right width and length. A bit of trimming. A lot of waiting between stages with the dough resting in the freezer, then fridge. This whole process took 4 1/2 hours.

Fast forward - we're at the shaping stage! I'm now about 5 hours into this and I'm so excited to see my croissants. All 10. Now they need to rest and rise. I found a big storage bag with a zip-top. After an hour and a half of rising, my croissants didn't look fluffy enough. Robin suggested placing a mug of hot water in the bag and then closing it again to create some steam and force the rise. 20 minutes later, my babies looked good!

Time to bake! I had two trays and was told to rotate them frequently. And, even though they "look" done, they are probably not. No distinct stripes. Get them brown. Pick them up and test the weight. Are they light as a feather?

This part was super stressful. After all this time, could I face underbaked or burnt croissants? Probably not. I was seriously on the brink...

And then they were done. I even impressed myself. They were beautiful. Flaky. Buttery. All I wanted to do was look at them.

I also learned that you can't eat them right out of the oven. They need to cool for several hours. And by this point, I didn't even want to eat them. That happened when I was in cooking school too. After all day cooking, the end result was enough.

But seriously, I had to have one for breakfast the next day. I warmed it in the oven. Pulled out the strawberry jam. Poured a cup of coffee. Very very very yum. Worth it? Maybe...not planning to attempt this again anytime soon. It was therapeutic and rewarding. And a good way to get through two days of sadness.

Thank you, Robin Nathan. You are an incredible teacher.