The Art of Croissants: La Haute Croissanterie

Sofitel Sydney Darling Harbour's La Haute Croissanterie offers up a range of house baked croissants filled with sweet and savoury fillings. We get a preview of an upcoming croissant class where you can learn the art of croissant making. And for Mother's Day there is a new flavour that utilises native ingredients. Come and read more about the work that goes into making each croissant and find out what the new flavour is!

It takes 30 hours from beginning to end for Italian pastry chef Victoria Siino to create a croissant from scratch. From January this year the French Sofitel hotel chain embraced the trend for fancy croissants. In January 2024 on world croissant day they launched La Haute Croissanterie in Sofitels around the world. Inspired by local ingredients and the beauty of Haute Couture fashion, each hotel creates croissants tailored to the hotel's location. At Sofitel Darling Harbour these are sold at the Esprit Noir cafe in the lobby.

At Esprit Noir there are always two sweet and one savoury croissants available and for this week there will be a new addition for Mother's Day: Tasmanian lavender and lemon myrtle. There are 9 in the hotel's pastry team headed by Pastry Chef Ian Burch (one of the original founders of Burch and Purchese) and Victoria is the only pastry chef dedicated to viennoiserie. The Mother's Day croissant was inspired by Ian's own mother who lives near a lavender farm in England. Lavender is her favourite flower and he was inspired to add lavender as a flavour after a visit to Bridestowe farms in Nabowla, Tasmania. The lemon myrtle is the Australian or native connection.

Victoria does a series of single and double folds to get the requisite number of layers of buttery dough and she counts these carefully. Making croissants involves using the dough and butter at particular temperatures - the butter needs to be between 2-4°C/35-39°F and the dough between -10-0°C/14-32°F. This temperatures makes the butter flexible or "plastic" enough to fold without breaking and the dough must be cold enough to encase the butter without letting it melt through the lamination process. Victoria bends the square of butter back and forth to show us. The French butter they use is not cheap at $27 a kilo but the flavour shines through in every bite. All of the trimmings are reshaped back into the dough to minimise wastage.

Ian and Victoria also shows us how to create the striped colour effect. The colour is from the same base dough but with food colouring added. This is rolled out thinly on top of the croissant dough which is then marked and then cut into long triangles. Each croissant triangle must be 28cm/11inches long. Victoria rolls up the croissant from the widest end to the tip. She also does not stretch the triangle of dough, like some pastry chefs do, because she feels that this impacts the end result.

Once baked and cooled each croissant is then brushed with a glaze so that the colours shine. This particular croissant is then filled with a mixture of lemon myrtle diplomat cream and lavender white chocolate cream on top.

We learn how they fill each croissant. First Ian cuts out a "V" into the top of the croissant so that the cream can to pipe the two creams on top of the croissant rather than making a hole and filling it. First we pipe some lemon myrtle diplomat cream followed by a squiggly curl of white chocolate lavender whipping ganache. Then four fine chocolate sticks are added along with crumbled macadamia praline. And lastly edible flowers to finish off each croissant. I take a bite and the croissant is father light with a satisfying crispness to it with a gorgeous combination of lemon and aromatic floral silky creams. I take two croissants home for Mr NQN and he devours both within the space of 10 minutes.

There are also plans to start production of their house made croissants in the breakfast buffet. These croissants will be smaller at 30g/1oz each as opposed to the 80g/2.8ozs croissants at Esprit Noir.

And if you're keen to try your hand making your own croissants, the Sofitel Sydney Darling Harbour is about to start their own croissant making classes where you can rolling, shaping and filling your own croissants and will depart with the recipe for you to recreate at home if the urge strikes.

So tell me Dear Reader, have you ever made croissants at home yourself? And do you like the sound of that flavour combination?

NQN attended the class as a guest of Sofitel Sydney Darling Harbour but all opinions remain her own.

La Haute Croissanterie

Sofitel Sydney Darling Harbour

12 Darling Dr, Sydney NSW 2000

Phone: (02) 8388 8888

Croissants available from 8:30am daily until sold out.