A few months ago, I tried making pastry dough from scratch. I had tons of fresh Michigan apples that I wanted to cook down and make into apple turnovers. Being the adventurous cook that I am, I decided I needed to make them with fresh dough. My pastry chef friend warned me how hard and time consuming it was, but I figured I could do it.

I was wrong.

I ended up with a dry, lumpy mess that I wanted to just throw away. I spent hours trying to make this into pastry dough, but it just wasn’t going to happen. I finally added more butter and water to make a pie crust out of it instead. That didn’t go very well either, but at least I hadn’t thrown the expensive pastry flour in the trash. After that horrible day, I decided to NEVER try making pastry dough again. It was too hard and time consuming. I really should have listened to my pastry chef friend.

Roll forward in time to last week when I had a delicious croissant at a cafe about an hour and a half from my home. They make their croissants fresh daily, and you could definitely taste the difference between them and ones you find in the grocery store. It was the BEST croissant I had ever eaten. Hubs said they were pretty good compared to the ones he had in France. I could eat these buttery fluff-balls everyday, but my wallet and waistline wouldn’t care for that. I was thankful at the time that they were so far away.

Yesterday, I craved that buttery croissant, but there was no way in hell I was driving that far for bread. Despite my “thou shalt not make pastry dough” rule from a few weeks before, I started googling for croissant recipes. I came across French Tart’s Traditional Buttery French Croissants for Lazy Bistro Breakfast and decided that I could do this. The base was a basic yeast bread and I have basic dough-rolling skills.

I am so happy I tried it. They turned out amazing and beautiful (as shown in the above picture). I followed the recipe exactly and I am very pleased with the results. Yes, it was time consuming. The key is that–this time–it wasn’t hard.

The moral of this story is that second chances can turn out great. Obviously, there are some things that shouldn’t be repeated, but I think most things could use another shot. My first time making pastry dough, rock climbing, and driving were horrible. Yet, I gave each another shot and now I’m happy doing all three!

What’s a food (or activity) that you tried once and said “never again!”? What would make you reconsider?