Making croissants without plastic wrap or parchment paper?

[jlaine3333]

Every recipe I come across for croissants uses plastic wrap/parchment paper or a huge dough sheeter machine to shape the ingredients perfectly. I'd like to cut down on my personal waste but I love making croissants, not to mention croissants WERE invented before either parchment paper or plastic wrap were (admittedly only a decade or so behind parchment paper but the point stands regardless). How can I go about making them properly without using either of these or is there a recipe already online? Thank you all.

 

[retired baker]

I was taught to cover the dough with a damp towel or apron, the damp super cools the dough , its better than plastic.
This is how they always did it in paris 4 basements down with no elec refrigeration.

they don't use parchment or didn't but they used steel trays, not alum.
you're better off using parchment these days.

 

[Purple_Lizzie]

Every recipe I come across for croissants uses plastic wrap/parchment paper or a huge dough sheeter machine to shape the ingredients perfectly. I'd like to cut down on my personal waste but I love making croissants, not to mention croissants WERE invented before either parchment paper or plastic wrap were (admittedly only a decade or so behind parchment paper but the point stands regardless). How can I go about making them properly without using either of these or is there a recipe already online? Thank you all.

My great grandmother was the best baker I had the fortune to love. She buttered her bowl and covered her dough with a towel, if her dough began to dry, she dipped her fingers in some water and sprinkled the towel. She used neutral tasting oil to prevent sticking when baking. She cooked and baked, by touch, smell, and taste. She had a relationship with everything while preparing food. Her favorite, tools, ingredients, and recipes. She was poor and grateful for each thing she had. Sugar, butter, a cake of live yeast, a sifter, and the recipes she kept stored in her own memory bank, those were her riches. Today that would be called mindfulness. You are already doing some of that. By the time I was a part of her life, she had perfected those recipes now gone, like her. I can find similar, and adjust, but it's not the same. Scratch/homemade cooking is intimate, it can be messy, and it takes time to build a relationship and get to know what you are working with. Happy Baking.

 

[EdwardGuerra]

While parchment paper is a popular choice for making croissants due to its non-stick properties and ease of use, you can still reduce waste by reusing parchment paper for multiple batches until it's no longer viable. Additionally, consider looking for unbleached parchment paper options, parchment paper be recycled which are more environmentally friendly. Remember to recycle the used parchment paper to further minimize your impact.

 

[Norcalbaker59]

Parchment paper that has been in direct contact with raw dough should not be re-used for food hygiene reasons.

The claims that unbleached parchment paper is better for the environment or safer is not supported by facts.

Baking parchment paper comes in two types, bleached or unbleached, and either silicone-coated or quilon-coated.

There’s a lot of talk about bleached paper and quilon online. Bloggers claim these are unsafe and bad for the environment.

They claim quilon is made of a “heavy metal” chemical, chromium. But chromium is classified as a transitional metal, so neither a heavy nor light metal.

Chromium is in three classifications based on the number of electrical ions.

Chromium-0 has no electrically charged ions. Chromium-0 is a hard stable form of chromium used in harden steel in metal production.

Chromium+6 has six charged ions. It is very unstable, so rare to find in the natural environment. The majority of chromium+6 is human-made for use in products like dyes, plastics, and paints. It is not used in baking paper.

Chromium+3 is stable and occurs naturally in our environment, including the foods we eat.

Chromium+3 is essential for insulin to regulate blood sugar levels, triglycerides, and cholesterol. Most multivitamins contain chromium which is essential for metabolism. I use multivitamin made from whole foods; it contains chromium.

Chromium+3 is naturally occurring in foods like whole grains, mushrooms, apples, broccoli, eggs, meats, tomatoes…the list goes on and on.

Chromium+3 is the type of chromium used to coat baking parchment paper.


While silicone may begin with a “natural” substance, it requires chemical processing to manufacture it into a usable product. This is true for just about all products we use in life.

A review of Wacker Chemie’s silicone baking paper patent application illustrates the complex chemical processes necessary to manufacture baking paper. It involves a lot of chemical processing.


https://patents.google.com/patent/US20170265480A1/en

Wacker is a large chemical manufacturing corporation.
https://www.wacker.com/cms/en-us/home/home.html


In 2003, the EU Commission for Health & Food Safety issued an opinion on the safety of silicone baking paper in which they concluded the method to cure silicone in manufacturing affected the types and amount of chemicals that migrated into food during baking on silicone-coated paper. It found silicone made using a dioctyltin oxide process resulted in the migration of monooctyltin and dioctyltin into food during baking.

While the vast majority of silicone-coated baking paper in Europe did not use a dioctyltin oxide process, 1.5% of baking paper did use the process. Its use in baking paper was subsequently discontinued in Europe.

All of this is to note that the level of safety of silicone baking paper depends on how it is manufactured.

https://food.ec.europa.eu/system/files/2020-12/sci-com_scf_out166_en.pdf


The claims that unbleached parchment paper is safe and better for the environment because it is “chlorine-free” is misleading as all paper is manufactured using chemicals. Sulfuric acid and concentrated zinc chloride are two chemicals commonly used in the manufacturing of parchment paper.

No matter what product we use, paper, silicone mats, cloth, etc, there is always some level of health risk, and certainly, all manufacturing affects the environment.

 

[Steelman]

You can certainly make croissants with minimal waste! To avoid using plastic wrap or parchment paper, cover your resting dough with a clean kitchen towel or an inverted bowl. For rolling and shaping, a well-floured surface and rolling pin should suffice, preventing the dough from sticking. During the proofing stage, lay your shaped croissants on a greased baking tray and cover them with a damp towel to keep them moist. If you’re willing to invest in a reusable option, a silicone baking mat can also replace parchment paper. This way, you can enjoy your baking while being environmentally conscious.

 

[Mona]

It's definitely possible to make croissants without plastic wrap or parchment paper. Instead of plastic wrap, you can use a clean, slightly damp kitchen towel to cover the dough while it rests. For baking, if you don't have parchment paper, try using a well-greased baking sheet or sprinkle some flour on the sheet to prevent sticking. It might take a little extra care, but your croissants can still turn out beautifully.