Official Cronut Recipe Is Out, Won’t Do You Any Good
The great pastry craze of 2013, Dominique Ansel’s hybrid breakfast treat the cronut, has inspired long lines, thinkpieces, despair, and hunger. Today, in advance of his new cookbook’s publication, the chef published the secret recipe for the delicate, buttery beast. But here’s the thing: It’s not going to do you any good.
The ingredients seem simple enough: flour, yeast, butter, cream, flour, kosher salt, and cooking spray, plus an egg white and some grapeseed oil. Hey, you probably have that lying around at home, right? Who needs the long line! Cronuts for everyone! But then there’s the part of the recipe that reminds you why we usually leave these pastry monsters to the professionals:
- Special equipment:
- Stand mixer with dough hook and whisk attachments
- Ruler
- Large offset spatula
- 3 1/2-inch (9 cm) ring cutter
- 1 inch (2.5 cm) ring cutter
- Deep-frying thermometer
- 2 uncut piping bags
- Wilton #230 Bismarck metal tip or other Bismarck tube
- Ateco #803 plain tip (5/16-inch/0.8 cm diameter)
Hmmm that might…require a trip. And some counter space? And then there’s the timeline. In order to make a cronut, you have to give yourself two days lead time, and also learn how to laminate dough. I believe in lay terms, “laminating” dough means “working as much butter into the dough as humanly possible.” And after all that you still have to fry the things, and make your own ganache. I mean, two days? That makes that 6 am cronut line seem pretty reasonable. But if you’re still hot to trot, you can find the entire cronut recipe here.
