Hazelnut Free Pain au Chocolat
Few things in the pastry world rival the moment you tear open a flaky, buttered croissant dough to find a molten ribbon of dark chocolate inside. This from-scratch version achieves those impossibly thin, shatteringly crisp layers through a classic lamination process — folding cold butter into the dough three times to build the structure that makes every bite so satisfying. The filling is beautifully straightforward: pure dark chocolate batons, nothing else, which means there's no risk of hidden hazelnut paste or nut-based spreads sneaking in the way they can with store-bought versions or café pastries. For anyone navigating a tree nut allergy or sensitivity, that simplicity is genuinely reassuring. The dough itself calls for pantry staples — flour, yeast, sugar, salt, milk, and butter — so you stay in complete control of every ingredient from start to finish. Yes, the process takes patience across multiple chilling sessions, but the hands-on time is manageable and the technique is learnable even for a first-time laminator. Pull them from the oven when they're a deep, even amber and let that chocolate set just slightly before you bite in — it's absolutely worth the wait.
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Learn more →Ingredients
8 servings
For the dough
- 3 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting
- 2 tsp instant yeast
- 3 tbsp granulated sugar
- 1 ½ tsp fine salt
- ¾ cup whole milk, cold
- ¼ cup water, cold
- 2 tbsp unsalted butter, softened
For the butter block
- 1 cup (2 sticks / 225g) unsalted butter, cold
For the filling
- 16 dark chocolate batons (or 4 oz dark chocolate, cut into 16 short sticks)
For the egg wash
- 1 large egg
- 1 tbsp whole milk
Instructions
- 1
In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the dough hook, combine the flour, instant yeast, sugar, and salt. Add the cold milk and cold water, then mix on low speed until a shaggy dough forms, about 2 minutes. Add the 2 tbsp softened butter and increase to medium speed, mixing until the dough is smooth and pulls away from the sides of the bowl, about 5 minutes. The dough should be slightly tacky but not sticky.
- 2
Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface, shape it into a flat rectangle roughly 6×8 inches, wrap tightly in plastic wrap, and refrigerate for at least 1 hour or overnight.
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