Besides bread rolls crescents are the most popular bakery products in Hungary. The number of crescent types is infinite, they can be varied in many ways. The following recipe is very simple, though it takes a little time but is well worth the wait. These crescents melt in your mouth.
Ingredients:
- 750 g (~6 cups) flour
- 40 g (~1 1/2 oz) fresh yeast (4 tsp dry yeast)
- 1 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp sugar
- 300 ml (~1 1/4 cups) lukewarm milk
- 3 heaping tbsp sour cream
- 6 tbsp oil
Place all ingredients in a mixing bowl and knead into a smooth dough. Cover and leave it to rest until it doubles in size, it takes about 50 minutes.
Turn out the dough onto a floured surface and divide into 10-12 equal pieces. Form them into balls and let them rise for 10 minutes. Roll out a dough ball into a thin square, then roll it up diagonally and curve it into a crescent. Place onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Repeat the process with the remaining dough balls.
Cover the crescents with a kitchen towel and leave them to rest for 25-30 minutes. Brush the top of the crescents with water and bake them in an oven preheated to 200°C / 392°F for 20 minutes or until golden brown.
Thanks for the recipe. I plan to make it very soon. One question: 750 grams of flour seems a lot to produce 10 kifli. Are these very large kifli, or perhaps, this much flour should make more than 10-12? I would think that much flour might produce around 2x that amount. Since they are best eaten same day, I would scale this recipe to make 6-8 kifli, but I think that would be not more than 350g flour. But I may be wrong. Thank you!
Hello Al, My crescents are 20-25 cm long (similar to store-bought kifli made by professional bakers) and usually eaten for breakfast, not at once. After baking when they are cool, I freeze them, so I always have fresh kifli. It’s up to your decision how big crescents you want to make, if you prefer smaller ones, feel free to reduce the quantity of flour.