It’s all about the layers…
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With this recipe we want to give you the exact directions on how we go about making classic French croissants. The recipe is an adaptation from the recipe for Classic Croissants by Jeffrey Hamelman. We started out largely following the instructions for his recipe, changed everything to our beloved metric system and found out some worthwhile croissant knowledge of our own along the way. Hopefully enough to justify sharing it all with you and inspiring you to give croissant baking a shot yourself.
Before you start we can recommend watching our croissant making video to get a general feel for the recipe. You can also check out our croissant making log where we keep track of our own croissant baking adventures.
This recipe will yield about 15 good croissants plus some leftover bits which you can use to make a few, slightly odd shaped ones, or other inventive croissant-like creations.
If at first you don’t succeed, maybe you can take comfort from the fact that our first efforts were not very ‘croissant worthy’. But as you can see we persevered and got better…But we have to admit it is and always will be a tricky process. You have to work precise and be focused to get good results. So away with screaming children, hyperactive animals and all other things distracting! Put on some appropriate croissant making music and lets get to it…
Please read the following tips;
According to Raymond Calvel croissants laminated with margarine are formed into the crescent shape, while croissants laminated with butter are left in the straight form. We say, use whichever shape you like best, but do use butter!
The croissant recipe
Ingredients for the croissant dough
500 g French Type 55 flour or unbleached all-purpose flour / plain flour (extra for dusting)
140 g water
140 g whole milk (you can take it straight from the fridge)
55 g sugar
40 g soft unsalted butter
11 g instant yeast
12 g salt
Other ingredients
makes 15
280 g cold unsalted butter for laminating
1 egg + 1 tsp water for the egg wash
Day 1
Making the croissant dough
We usually do this part in the evening. Combine the dough ingredients and knead for 3 minutes, at low to medium speed, until the dough comes together and you’ve reached the stage of low to moderate gluten development. You do not want too much gluten development because you will struggle with the dough fighting back during laminating. Shape the dough like a disc, not a ball, before you refrigerate it, so it will be easier to roll it into a square shape the following day. Place the disc on a plate, cover with clingfilm and leave in the fridge overnight.
Day 2
Laminating the dough
Cut the cold butter (directly from the fridge) lengthwise into 1,25 cm thick slabs. Arrange the pieces of butter on waxed paper to form a square of about 15 cm x 15 cm. Cover the butter with another layer of waxed paper and with a rolling pin pound butter until it’s about 19 cm x 19 cm. Trim / straighten the edges of the butter and put the trimmings on top of the square. Now pound lightly until you have a final square of 17 cm x 17 cm. Wrap in paper and refrigerate the butter slab until needed.
Take the dough out of the fridge. With a rolling pin roll out the dough disc into a 26 cm x 26 cm square. Try to get the square as perfect as possible and with an even thickness. Get the slab of butter from the fridge. Place the dough square so one of the sides of the square is facing you and place the butter slab on it with a 45 degree angle to the dough so a point of the butter square is facing you. Fold a flap of dough over the butter, so the point of the dough reaches the center of the butter. Do the same with the three other flaps. The edges of the dough flaps should slightly overlap to fully enclose the butter. With the palm of your hand lightly press the edges to seal the seams.
Now the dough with the sealed in butter needs to be rolled out. With a lightly floured rolling pin start rolling out, on a lightly flour dusted surface, the dough to a rectangle of 20 x 60 cm. Start rolling from the center of the dough towards the edges, and not from one side of the dough all the way to the other side. This technique helps you to keep the dough at an even thickness. You can also rotate your dough 180 degrees to keep it more even, because you tend to use more pressure when rolling away from you than towards yourself. You can use these techniques during all the rolling steps of this recipe. Aim at lengthening the dough instead of making it wider and try to keep all edges as straight as possible.
Fold the dough letter style, cover with clingfilm and refrigerate for 30 minutes (fold one third of the dough on top of itself and then fold the other side over it). Repeat the rolling and folding two more times (ending up with 27 layers of butter in total), each time rolling until the dough is about 20 cm x 60 cm. After each fold you should turn the dough 90 degrees before rolling again. The open ‘end’ of the dough should be towards you every time when rolling out the dough (you can see this in our croissant making video at around 3:40 minutes). After the second turn, again give it a 30 minute rest in the fridge. After the third turn you leave the dough in the fridge overnight until day 3, the actual croissant making day!
- Roll out to 20 cm x 60 cm
- Refrigerate 30 minutes
- Rotate 90 degrees
- Roll out to 20 cm x 60 cm
- Refrigerate 30 minutes
- Rotate 90 degrees
- Roll out to 20 cm x 60 cm
- Refrigerate until day 3
- Rotate 90 degrees
- Roll out to 20 cm x 110 cm
Also see complete time table at bottom of page
Day 3
Dividing the dough
Take the dough from the fridge. Lightly flour your work surface. Now very gently roll the dough into a long and narrow strip of 20 cm x 110 cm. If the dough starts to resist too much or shrink back during this process you can fold it in thirds and give it a rest in the fridge for 10 to 20 minutes before continuing. Do not fight the dough, when the dough refuses to get any longer, rest it in the fridge! It is such a shame to ruin two days of work.
When your dough has reached its intended shape, carefully lift it a few centimeters to allow it to naturally shrink back from both sides. This way it will not shrink when you cut it. Your strip of dough should be long enough to allow you to trim the ends to make them straight and still be left with a length of about 100 cm.
Shaping the croissants
For the next stage you will need a tape measure and a pizza wheel. Lay a tape measure along the top of the dough. With the wheel you mark the top of the dough at 12,5 cm intervals along the length (7 marks total). Now lay the tape measure along the bottom of the dough and make a mark at 6,25 cm. Then continue to make marks at 12,5 cm intervals from this point (8 marks total). So the bottom and the top marks do not align with each other and form the basis for your triangles.
Now make diagonal cuts starting from the top corner cutting down to the first bottom mark. Make diagonal cuts along the entire length of the dough. Then change the angle and make cuts from the other top corner to the bottom mark to create triangles. Again repeat this along the length of the dough. This way you will end up with 15 triangles and a few end pieces of dough.
Using your pizza wheel, make 1.5 cm long notches in the center of the short side of each dough triangle.
Now very gently elongate each triangle to about 25 cm. This is often done by hand, but we have found that elongating with a rolling pin, very carefully, almost without putting pressure on the dough triangle, works better for us. You can try both methods and see what you think gives the best result.
After you cut a notch in the middle of the short end of the triangle, try and roll the two wings by moving your hands outwards from the center, creating the desired shape with a thinner, longer point. Also try and roll the dough very tightly at the beginning and put enough pressure on the dough to make the layers stick together (but not so much as to damage the layers of course).
Proofing and baking
Arrange the shaped croissants on baking sheets, making sure to keep enough space between them so they will not touch when proofing and baking. Combine the egg with a teaspoon of water and whisk until smooth. Give the croissants their first thin coating of egg wash.
Proof the croissants draft-free at an ideal temperature of 24ºC to 26.5ºC / 76ºF to 79ºF (above that temperature there is a big chance butter will leak out!). We use our small Rofco B20 stone oven as a croissant proofing cabinet by preheating it for a minute to 25ºC / 77ºF. It retains this temperature for a long time because of the oven stones and isolation. The proofing should take about 2 hours. You should be able to tell if they are ready by carefully shaking the baking sheet and see if the croissants slightly wiggle. You should also be able to see the layers of dough when looking at your croissants from the side.
Preheat the oven at 200ºC / 390ºF convection or 220ºC / 430ºF conventional oven.
Right before baking, give the croissants their second thin coat of egg wash. We bake the croissants in our big convection oven for 6 minutes at 195ºC, then lowering the temperature to 165ºC, and bake them for another 9 minutes. Hamelman suggest baking the croissants for 18 to 20 minutes at 200ºC, turning your oven down a notch if you think the browning goes too quickly. But you really have to learn from experience and by baking several batches what the ideal time and temperature is for your own oven. Take out of the oven, leave for a few minutes on the baking sheet, then transfer to a cooling rack.
Latest way of baking; We heat up our double fan big convection oven at 200ºC, when heated up put the croissants in the oven and directly lower it to 175ºC. We bake them for 10 minutes at 175ºC, they will have a nice brown color by now, then lower the temperature to 150ºC, and bake them for another 6 minutes.
Best eaten while warm and fresh of course. Croissant we don’t eat or share within a day we freeze. We put them in the preheated oven (180ºC / 355ºF) for 8 minutes straight from the freezer. Nothing wrong with that, croissants eaten nice and warm, almost as good as the fresh ones…almost!
Croissant Time Table
Times are an indication and also depend on your experience with the recipe
Try to work swift but precise and take extra fridge time if needed!
Day 1 – Make initial dough
- 21.00 h – Knead for 3 minutes and store in fridge for 12 hours
Day 2 – Laminate the dough
- 09.00 h – Make butter slab and refrigerate till needed
- 09.05 h – Roll dough disc into square
- 09.10 h – Seal butter in dough
- 09.15 h – Roll out to 20 cm x 60 cm and fold
- Refrigerate 30 minutes
- 09.50 h – Rotate 90 degrees
- Roll out to 20 cm x 60 cm and fold
- Refrigerate 30 minutes
- 10.25 h – Rotate 90 degrees
- Roll out to 20 cm x 60 cm and fold
- 11.00 h – Refrigerate until day 3
Day 3 – Dividing, Shaping, proofing and baking
- 09.00 h – Roll out to 20 cm x 110 cm – part 1
- 09.05 h – Often needed! Take 20 min. fridge time if length not in one go
- 09.25 h – Roll out to 20 cm x 110 cm – part 2
- 09.30 h – Divide and shape the croissants
- 09.40 h – First coat of egg wash
- 09.45 h – Proof to perfection (indication 2 hours)
- 11.45 h – Second coat of egg wash
- 11.50 h – Bake for 15-18 minutes
- 12.10 h – Ready!
mike says
Thank you for the blog and i am one of those people who cherish and love croissant,l have been trying to make some and your blog stand out to be the best however l found it hard to understand the first step as a beginner,you talk of the day but not what and what you mix,l have gone over the the procedure several times with no avail,when you write please do not restrict your mind to US and europe,l am from Africa and the internet is a small world,hope you will explain to me the first step
.
Jocelyn says
Hi,
How do you make the middle of the croissant airy like the one on your photo.
Thanks,
Joyce
Noli says
Good day Sir!
I’d tried 1 day version and it works! Oven it at 180 deg. C in 30 minutes and the result is perfect! The ingredients is perfect compare the other recipe which i tried about 8x but with this recipe… all first 3 tries are perfect! Thanks for the unconditional sharing of knowledge. God bless you…
Nicole says
I baked my croissants yesterday using your recipe and they turned out pretty good thanks to your detailed instructions. I really enjoyed the process and hope to bake many more!
Nat says
This recipe is excellent! I think it allows for some margin of error as well, e.g. not fighting the dough on day 3. This was my second effort at croissants (the first time was an epic failure) and they turned out perfectly! as a note, I have a standard oven ( not convection) and preheated to 430F, reduced to 390F for 10 minutes and then to 350F for 8 minutes.
Weekend Bakers says
Thank you Nat, great you already have such excellent results with batch 2.
jesme says
American English, posted for Americans to use, American browser, American isp, American measurement would be much appreciated.
Nat says
As we are one of two nations that don!t use metric, it seems a bit wrong to demand standard measures. Most US measuring cups also have metric, and for 10 to 15 dollars US you can buy a scale to measue standard or metric.
Weekend Bakers says
We very much recommend weighing your ingredients. Professional bakers use scales (also in the US) and in Europe home bakers do too. A scale will give you the exact same weight every time. Which is absolutely needed if you consistently want to make good bread and especially good pastry.
And thank you Nat we agree, you can get a scale for the same price as a few sacks of good flour and less than a lot of baking tools you already own!
Tris says
Hi,
I made your recipe and it’s so delightful. I used bread flour instead of all purpose flour i’m not sure if that’s ok?
There’s one problem after baking, my croissants’ layers look a bit sticking together, I can’t really see it. Is it because I underproof? Is there any chances I can send the pictures for you to describe my problem?
The winter in my place is really cold, around 4 degree now so i put a boiling water under my oven, turn on the light to create a humid environment for proofing, but after two hours, it’s indeed getting bigger but maybe not enough. Should I proof for another hour?
Regards,
Tris
Simon says
Hello.
I also get the layers sticking together, but just on the inside. Lamination seems good on the exterior as I have many crispy, flaky layers, but the inside looks terrible!
My initial instinct was that the dough was under-proofed, but now I am wondering if I am using too much force when rolling as I always struggle with the final roll as the dough is very elastic. I am in the U.K. and have substituted strong white flour with protein around 13.5%.
Thanks!
Weekend Bakers says
Hello Simon,
You did your own analysis and we agree. We would suggest using a flour closer to the type 55 French flour with around 11% and / or making sure there is less gluten development, avoiding too much of a struggle with the dough. Keeping at this for a while means, next to the pressing on the dough, you are taking too long and the butter starts to get warm and is absorbed by the dough. So also make sure that you take a break when needed. Fold your dough letter style, cover it and refrigerate it for 20 minutes and continue the rolling process after this rest.
Happy pastry baking!
Weekend Bakers says
Hello Tris,
We have a few suggestions. First the bread flour alone could give a heavier result and because there could be more protein in it compared to the all purpose flour you could end up with a more elastic dough, fighting it more, pushing it to elongate and thus damaging the layers. The same as Simon is indicating in his reaction to your comment. If you want to send us pictures you can do so here: www.weekendbakery.com/send-…your-loaf/ and we can see your results.
We would also suggest, if you see the croissants need more time to proof to perfection and have that wobble, to take more time. At the same time it would be good to know the temperatures of your dough, oven and surroundings, to judge if you are in the right ballpark for the right proofing conditions. More tips on this subject here: www.weekendbakery.com/posts…mperature/
We also have a page with frequent asked questions about croissants that might be of help: www.weekendbakery.com/posts…questions/
Happy baking and just keep making them and the results will be better.
Juan Alejandro says
Dear WB team,
First of all thank you for this great recipe, it’s the best I found online after a long search.
I’ve been trying to follow this recipe but using sourdough, so far not so good.
Normally for this proportion of yeast I replace it with 40% sourdough (of flour) but the dough do not reach the consistency, it’s too soft and resists too much the roll out process.
Any suggestion would be very appreciated.
Thanks in advance and congratulations for this nice website!!!!
Weekend Bakers says
Hello Juan,
Thank you for sharing your experience. We would recommend finding a recipe that is already a worked out version for sourdough croissants. We are not really a fan of the sour taste in pastry and for that reason we do not have enough experience ourselves to guide you to a good enough result. We do want to suggest taking a look at the flour type you are using for this recipe (and for the culture), maybe you could try another one, it can make a big difference in the end result too.
Good luck with it!
Caro says
Hello, just wantonto thank you again, I baked them yesteraday following the instruction to the letter. The result was amazing, all my family loved them, I still need to work, on the final part, because some of them loose their shape. But everything else was great. Than you for doing this and help everyone with all the pictures and steps we need to follow. You are awesome!!!
Weekend Bakers says
Thank you so much Caro, we are sure with every batch you will gain more experience and your results will be even better.
Enjoy the baking and sharing!
Ed & Marieke
Hussein Kanbar says
Hi dear
Am Hussein kanbar from Lebanon and am bakery manager but this receipt is taken my attention and I would like to check it.hope the result to be nice
will keep in touch.
Weekend Bakers says
Let us know how it goes Hussein!
If you are an experiences baker you can also check out the one day version of this recipe:
www.weekendbakery.com/posts…nt-recipe/
Caro says
Thank you, I have a cuestion about the yeast. In wich momento do you add it? I mean does it have a different process like combine it with the water, milk and sugar, leave it for some time and then mix it with the other ingredients, Or you just add everything at the same time? I ask this because there are several recepies in which the process with the yeast is different. Thak you again!
Weekend Bakers says
Hi Caro,
We use instant yeast (dry yeast) and this yeast you can always just add to the other ingredients, without dissolving or activating it first. So for the dough in this recipe you simply combine all the ingredients, including the yeast, and make the dough like we describe.
Happy pastry baking!
Carla Sylvester says
Weekend Bakers , Croissant is a pastry I love very much always believe I should learn how just thanking you’ll so kindly for putting selves on social media that many would be able to practise and become perfect challenges may come but its to make us like you’ll much thanks to Almighty God for blessings He bestowed upon weekend bakers may His blessings continue to reign throughout…. GreatnessCarla
Weekend Bakers says
Hello Carla,
Thank you for your kind words, much appreciated.
Wishing you many inspired baking hours and lovely pastries to share with your family and loved ones.
Greetings,
Marieke & Ed
Gajanan v. Mane says
very Good
Katariina says
Thanks so much for the immaculate instructions!
I just baked these, followed the recipe to a T. This was my second attempt at making croissants, previously I used a different recipe. This time I managed to really pull it off and I am so pleased with the results. Near perfection, even if I say so myself.
Weekend Bakers says
Hi Katariina,
Thank you and there is no shame in being a proud baker 🙂
Wishing you many more flaky pastries!
Mona Gazaly says
hi i have problem my crissont not layers it dens
i use 45 flour is it wright ?
Weekend Bakers says
Hello Mona,
Yes you can use type 45 flour with good results. We do not know how often you made the recipe but please keep in mind that most people need to make it 3 to 4 times to get the general feeling for the process. There is no substitute for practice and experience. There is no way to hide little mistakes in your technique when making croissants, so work very precise and follow the instructions to the letter. One small mistake is no problem but several small mistakes add up! Not getting layers can have many causes. We do have answers and suggestions for most of your questions here: www.weekendbakery.com/posts…questions/
twijukye david says
l made it at my home
Weekend Bakers says
Hope it turned out great!
Nikolai says
While proofing, my croissants started to kinda tear apart on the tops. There was also butter leaking out and the bottom rack had the problem less than the top one. Is this surely because of the proofing-temperature?
In the end they also didnt rise up, just got flat and had no layers after baking.
But up until that point I had the feeling, that things were going really nicely. So I really wanna know where the problem was.. So yeah, just asking if you think it was the proofing temperature or if you have other ideas
Weekend Bakers says
Hi Nicolai,
Were you able to measure the temperature while proofing? It really should never go over 26C. It sounds like it was really too warm!