Originally published on StarChefs.com, photography by Will Blunt.
Pastry Chef Valeria Taylor (or Maria del Socorro Valeria Rebeca Ballado Velazquez, as she’s known in Mexico) made her first croissant two years after she opened Loba Coffee + Pastry. A fan of chocolate croissants, she wanted to put a twist on them by adding mole, inspired by her childhood in Guadalajara (full recipe here). Taylor’s family cooks whatever they can from scratch, so once she developed her mock-sourdough croissants, she began working on her own mole recipe. When time and seasonality allows, Taylor blends up a sesame-based mole paste with golden raisins, pasilla and chipotle chiles, cinnamon, and unripe plantains. When it doesn’t, she uses Teloloapan mole paste instead.
With the croissant recipe figured out and the mole chosen came the final unexpected challenge: combining the two. When Taylor attempted to integrate the mole into the dough, the spices broke down the gluten bonds. After some trial and error, she found that incorporating the mole into the butter block best protected the dough from the spice. But still, exact timing is key — if Taylor waits too long to bake after shaping, the bonds will begin to break and the croissant will not rise properly.
“Mole is the Mexican version of curry,” she says. Everyone has a different recipe, and it varies depending on where and when it’s being made. Although mole in Guadalajara is likely going to be pretty different from a mole croissant in Chicago, both evoke childhood memories of special occasions. Taylor says, “I’m always trying to recreate something that I had when I was growing up.”
