How to bake croissants

How do you bake croissants, step by step?

Mix and chill the dough, lock in the butter, give it three folds with rests in between, roll and cut triangles, shape, proof, glaze and bake. Done properly, it takes two days.

Here is the shape of a classic schedule.

Weekend Bakery's own schedule stretches to a third morning for the bake. Bakeries compress it with freezers and proofing cabinets. A class compresses it by baking dough the chef started earlier, which is why no croissant class takes you from flour to oven in one go.

What temperature do you bake croissants at?

Around 200 °C (390 °F) in a fan oven or 220 °C (430 °F) in a conventional oven, lowered once they start to colour.

Those are Weekend Bakery's preheat figures for home ovens. Professional ovens run a little cooler and faster: Elle & Vire's recipe bakes at 190 to 200 °C for 15 to 17 minutes in a deck oven, or 175 °C for 8 to 12 minutes with a fan. Its target is simple: “nice and golden”.

The other temperatures matter as much as the oven:

• The room: below 20 °C (68 °F) for a first attempt, says Weekend Bakery.
• The proof: 24 to 26.5 °C (76 to 79 °F), draught-free. Warmer and the butter melts out before the oven.
• Reheating: frozen baked croissants revive in about 8 minutes at 175 °C (345 °F).

What is lamination, and how many folds does a croissant need?

Lamination is folding butter into dough to build layers. The classic French method uses three single folds, which turns one slab of butter into 27 layers.

Each single fold, the letter fold, triples the layers: 3, then 9, then 27. A double fold, the book fold, multiplies them by four. Elle & Vire's professional recipe uses one single and one double, for 12 butter layers and a bolder, more open crumb. Across recipes, croissant dough ends up with 16 to 50 layers of fat.

More folds is not better. Past a point the layers get so thin that the butter merges with the dough and the croissant turns bready. Between folds the dough rests in the cold, about an hour each in the Elle & Vire method, so the gluten relaxes and the butter firms up again.

Which butter and flour make the best croissants?

A dry butter with about 82 to 84% fat, and a medium-strength flour such as French type 55. Wetter butter breaks into pieces during the folds.

Weekend Bakery asks for butter of about 82% fat with low water, because watery butter turns hard and shatters. Professionals use “extra dry” sheets: Elle & Vire's recipe uses 700 g of 84% butter for 1,250 g of flour, so the butter weighs more than half as much as the flour.

For flour, Weekend Bakery prefers French type 55, or a flour of about 11% protein. All bread flour can make the result heavy. In France's croissant contests the butter is fixed: the national final requires Charentes-Poitou AOP butter, supplied by the organisers.

Are croissants the hardest pastry to make?

They are among the hardest, because they punish small temperature mistakes over two days. Macarons are fussier in the mixing; croissants are fussier about time and cold.

Most failures trace back to temperature. Weekend Bakery's list of common faults is worth reading before your first batch:

• Butter pooling on the tray: usually under-proofing, not too much butter.
• Butter breaking into shards during the folds: butter too cold, or too much water in it.
• A bready crumb with no layers: pressing too hard, too long at room temperature, or butter absorbed into the dough.
• Splitting in the oven: weak layering and under-proofing.
• Pale or patchy colour: an oven running off its dial.

Professionals add one more trap: rushing the rests. If the dough fights the rolling pin, it goes back in the fridge for 10 to 20 minutes.

What are the 5 basic baking skills?

Weighing accurately, mixing and kneading, controlling temperature, shaping, and judging the bake. Croissants test all five in one recipe.

1. Weighing: bakers weigh everything, water included. A few grams of salt or yeast change a dough.
2. Mixing and kneading: enough to build gluten, not so much that the dough fights the folds.
3. Temperature control: dough, butter, room and proof. Elle & Vire aims for a dough at about 27 °C after mixing, then chills it hard.
4. Shaping: even rolling, clean cuts and a tight, regular roll. The contest jury scores shape and regularity.
5. Judging the bake: colour, smell and sound, not only the timer.

A class is a fast way to get the third and fourth. The chef's hands tell you more about how cold butter should feel than any thermometer.

Why are croissants so much better in France?

Mostly because of butter, practice and competition: French artisan bakers laminate with high-fat butter every morning, the trade's code mentions only butter, and contests keep the standard public.

A croissant is the daily product of French artisan boulangeries, laminated and baked on site. The bakers' confederation, the CNBPF, told Food & Wine that its code of practice mentions only butter and sets no rule on shape. The national contest judges bake, lamination, shape, regularity, flavour, aroma and crumb, and the 2025 final brought 19 regional winners to the Drôme.

Not every French croissant is good. Since butter prices rose, some bakers laminate with a cheaper blend of vegetable oils, water and colourant with at most 25% butter, a Paris baker warned in 2025. In a bakery, ask for a croissant au beurre. The butter croissant post covers how to tell.

Can a three-hour class teach you to bake croissants?

It can teach you every step and give you the feel of the dough. You will still need a weekend at home to do the full two-day version alone.

In class you see the butter slab go in, fold a dough, roll it thin, cut and shape your own triangles, glaze and bake. The chef explains the timing you cannot fit into the morning. Kaitlyn, after the croissant class with a chef: “you get to take the recipe home as well as everything that you baked.”

Then do it at home within a week or two, while your hands remember. Start on a cool day, in a cool kitchen, with a half batch.

Three hours of lamination, shaping and baking with a pastry chef, and the recipe for your first batch at home.

★ 5.0 · 3 hours · from $137

Explore the croissant class with a chef → Class details

Frequently asked questions