Installing specific laravel version with composer create-project

From the composer help create-project command

The create-project command creates a new project from a given
package into a new directory. If executed without params and in a directory with a composer.json file it installs the packages for the current project.
You can use this command to bootstrap new projects or setup a clean
version-controlled installation for developers of your project.

[version]
You can also specify the version with the package name using = or : as separator.
To install unstable packages, either specify the version you want, or use the --stability=dev (where dev can be one of RC, beta, alpha or dev).

This command works:

composer create-project laravel/laravel=4.1.27 your-project-name --prefer-dist

This works with the * notation.

Have a look:

Laravel 4.2 Documentation

Syntax (Via Composer):

composer create-project laravel/laravel {directory} 4.2 --prefer-dist

Example:

composer create-project laravel/laravel my_laravel_dir 4.2

Where 4.2 is your version of laravel.

Note: It will take the latest version of Laravel automatically If you will not provide any version.