Bicolor Croissants and Pain au Chocolat

Pastry made by Jimmy Griffin Master Baker

My dear friend, French master baker David Bedu, based in Florence, Italy, was the creator of the “Croissant Bicolor.” He inspired me to both mimic and recreate his legendary croissant in a different and unique form. The croissant bicolor is the fusion of a croissant dough block before sheeting with a coloured sheet of brioche. In David Bedu’s case, his iconic chocolate bicolor was created using a cocoa-flavoured brioche which covered croissant dough. There have since been countless variations of the bicolor croissant which include strawberry, raspberry, coffee, purple or blue raspberry, and green apple to mention but a few. Chocolatines also look very pretty when made using bicolour pastry, especially when scored as in the images below:

Pastry made by Jimmy Griffin Master Baker
Bicolor Chocolatine
Bicolor Chocolate Croissant

To make a nice croissant bicolor chocolat, the white croissant pastry is laminated by using the 3-4-4 sequence. Chocolate brioche is sheeted separately at a ratio of 4:1 or 225g of chocolate yeasted brioche dough per kg of croissant dough. The brioche dough was coloured by the addition of dark cocoa powder at a rate of 10% flour at the mixing stage. This chocolate dough is then sheeted and placed on top of the plain croissant dough before final sheeting, and the combined dough and brioche is then reduced to 3.5mm by passing it through the dough sheeter several times. In the chapter ‘Coupe du Monde Chocolatine’ of my book, The Art of Lamination: Advanced Technical Laminated Pastry Production, I have a recipe for chocolate dough using the croissant dough specified in the book, and it saves time, not having to weigh a separate dough each time you make it.

Many unique products can be made using a combination of bicolor croissant dough and with the addition of fillings and flavours which complement the chocolate, such as orange, mint and raspberry. When colouring brioche dough, I recommend the use of dry powder or edible paste colours which should be added at the beginning of the mixing. Paste and powder colours retain most of their colour following the baking process. There are also many choices of natural concentrated food colours for making this type of pastry on the market today. 

Full recipes and more tips are available in my book, The Art of Lamination: Advanced Technical Laminated Pastry Production.