Croissant Recipe from Scratch (small batch recipe) - Dessert for Two (2024)

FAQs

What is the best flour to use for croissants? ›

Although you can produce excellent croissants from all-purpose flour, bread flour, or frozen packaged white dough, the high gluten content makes for hard and rubbery rolling out. A mixture of 2 parts unbleached pastry flour and 1 part unbleached all-purpose flour gives a dough that is much easier to handle.

First: use high-protein bread flour. The extra protein gives you the gluten structure to support all those thin layers. Second secret? We'll learn to laminate the dough using a tri-fold process that creates 109 distinct layers of butter and dough—giving us the croissant's distinctive crunch and flavor at home.

First and foremost, you should use European or European-style butter which consists of 83% to 84% of butterfat. It should be 68° Fahrenheit and in the consistency of cream cheese, spreadable with a spatula.

It depends on your recipe. The one I use, which makes one dozen, calls for two tablespoons of butter in the dough and a cup of butter for the lamination, which comes to about two tablespoons of butter per croissant.

You can use bread flour or all purpose flour. Gluten-free or cake flour are far too delicate for croissants.

Use bread flour

Bread flour has a greater protein content than regular flour. This protein content is important when making croissants as it forms the basis of the croissant structure. I find that a protein content of 11-12% is best as it ensures your croissant can rise tall and stay at that height once baked.

Under or over-proofing the croissants

Failing to proof your croissant dough for long enough is a common mistake that most commonly results in croissants leaking butter while baking, a tight crumb, and a flat, undeveloped flavor.

Across various accounts of croissant history, most sources agree that it originates from Austria as the kipferl.

A cornetto (Italian: [korˈnetto]; meaning 'little horn') is historically the Italian name of a product similar to the Austrian kipferl, though today it is an interchangeable name for the French croissant. The main ingredients of a cornetto are pastry dough, eggs, butter, water and sugar.

Help, butter leaks out when baking!

Your croissants were probably under-proofed. Just let them proof a bit longer so they get wobbly and increase visually in size. When under-proofed the butter tends to leak out from in between the layers and you end up with a butter puddle.

Can you use American butter to make croissants? ›

Yes, you still can use American Butter in this recipe and have no problems. Just know they could be even more buttery (in taste and texture) using European butter.

That's what Costco buyer Mark Klauber and his team were searching for when they collaborated with Westland Milk Products in Hokitika, New Zealand, to create Kirkland Signature™ Grass-Fed Butter, launched in 2021.

The large amount of butter used in croissants does make croissants high in saturated fat, with typically-sized butter croissants containing 8 to 12 grams of saturated fat. The high fat content in croissants is due to lamination.

Tip 2: Make Butter Block

On parchment paper, place 3 sticks of cold butter side-by-side and make a packet by folding the parchment over the butter. Lightly beat and roll over the packet until the butter is an even 1/2-inch-thick layer.

What butter should I use? French boulangeries use butter that has a high fat content of 85 to 87 percent. For best results use quality butter with a high fat content and no additives or extra water. European style or imported butters can often be found in specialty grocery stores.

Most bakers use low-protein bread flour milled from HRW (hard red winter) wheat, which provides enough strength to support the additional ingredients commonly found in doughs like croissant or brioche.

Pastry flour is a versatile ingredient perfect for creating baked goods such as pie dough, cookies, and biscuits. It has a protein content lower than all-purpose flour and higher than cake flour. This unique balance makes pastry flour an excellent choice for achieving a flaky and light texture in your baked treats.

Falling between all-purpose and cake flour, pastry flour is also made from soft wheat, but with a 7–9 percent protein content. It produces both the tender crumb and flaky texture that is desired in most pastries. It should not be used for baking bread because it has too little gluten.

Bread flour has higher protein content than all-purpose, which helps it create the gluten structure necessary for baking a quality loaf of bread. Bread flour can also be useful for pastry recipes that require good gluten development, like laminated doughs, or popovers.