Katherine, there's no need to be scared of croissants--just a flaky, French pastry! However, we do understand that the preparation of this dough by seem a bit intimidating. If you are a beginner baker you may feel more comfortable starting with an easy pastry dough like our Easy Mini Puffs, which you can take a look at here: http://bit.ly/1CbxgF9. On to your questions so that when you are ready to take on croissants, you will have great success; the first step of the dough-mixing can be done in the bucket of your bread machine set on the dough cycle or in a stand mixer using the paddle attachment. You could hypothetically divide this recipe in half, but since the preparation is quite labor intensive, we recommend freezing half of the prepared dough if you only want to bake a dozen croissants at a time. Good luck and happy croissant baking! Kye@KAF

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