Crumble the yeast with your hands and then dissolve it, in a small saucepan, in a glass of lukewarm milk. In a bowl, mix the flour with the sugar. Add the melted butter (which has cooled down completely), the milk with the dissolved yeast, some salt and the grated pecorino, and then mix again. Now pour in the remaining milk, a little at a time, stirring constantly. Transfer the mixture onto your work surface, sprinkled with a flour, and knead with your hands until you have a smooth and homogeneous ball of dough. Cover with cling film and leave to rise – preferably near to a heat source – for at least 2 hours. After this time, remove the cling film and use a rolling pin to roll out the dough on your work surface, sprinkled with a handful of flour; try to shape it into a rectangle (to make it even you can cut the sides off) approximately 2 mm thick. Cut the sheet of dough in half lengthwise, and then into triangles; roll them up from the base to the tip and bend the ends inwards, to give them the typical “croissant shape”. Place them on a baking tray lined with greaseproof paper, leaving plenty of space between them. Leave to rise again for about 30 minutes in a warm place, then beat the egg yolk with a spoonful of milk, brush the croissants with this egg wash and sprinkle with the sesame seeds. Bake them in a preheated oven, at 190 °C, for roughly 20 minutes, until they are a nice golden colour. Remove them from the oven and leave to cool down completely. These croissants are delicious as they are to accompany cold cuts and cheeses, but you can also fill them with various ingredients, for example:
- Pesto, cherry tomatoes and basil
- Piccantissima, sausage and pan-fried peppers
- Carciofini Trifolati and flakes of aged pecorino cheese