Description
Layers of dough, butter, and dark chocolate make this Flaky Homemade Pain au Chocolat unforgettable. Bake like a French bakery without leaving your kitchen
Ingredients
Units
Scale
- 500 g strong white bread flour
- 1 tsp salt
- 75 g caster sugar
- 10 g instant yeast
- 270 ml cold water
- 350 g unsalted butter, slightly softened
- 250 g dark chocolate (70% cocoa works best)
- 1 egg + 1 tbsp milk (for glazing)
Instructions
- Mix the flour, salt, sugar, yeast, and water into a dough.
- Knead for about 10 minutes by hand (or 5 minutes with a dough hook). Don’t stress if it looks a bit rough; it’ll smooth out.
- Take the butter out of the fridge. Give it a little bash with a rolling pin and shape it into a neat rectangle.
- Roll your dough into a rectangle about 3x the size of the butter.
- Place the butter on two-thirds of the dough, then fold the bare third over the butter, and fold the other buttered side on top, like folding a letter.
- Roll gently with a rolling pin to seal. Wrap, chill for 15 minutes.
- Roll out again (short ends toward you), fold the same way, chill again for 15 minutes. Do this fold-and-chill routine 4 times total.
- Wrap the dough and chill for at least 2 hours or overnight (overnight gives you extra flaky layers).
- Roll out the dough to about the thickness of a pound coin. Cut into 12 x 12 cm squares.
- Slice your chocolate into 12 bars (shards are fine). Place one bar near the edge of each square and roll it up snug like a little log.
- Place on a lined baking sheet, seam side down. Cover and proof for 1 hour.
- Preheat oven to 220°C (200°C fan).
- Brush with egg wash and bake 15–20 minutes until puffed, golden, and irresistible.
- Serve warm, ideally with coffee, pretending you’re sitting in Paris
Notes
Prepared, tried, and tested by Joy
