How to Make Croissants

It's a complex recipe. Takes some time and patience, but it's doable. And with all of the video here, you've got a great chance at success. Plus, the dough freezes well, so a batch of dough can make fresh pastries every weekend for a month.

Laminated Pastry Dough

A great recipe, roughly based on the famous Tartine croissant dough recipe. It's a lengthy process, but well worth the investment. This batch should make about 12 pastries. You can freeze leftover dough, but you might wanna halve the recipe.

If you're working from frozen, leave the dough in the fridge overnight to thaw. When the dough is at a workable texture, roll it out to a large rectangle. I like to shoot for somewhere around 1/4"-1/2" thick. The rectangle should be around 25"x10".

You want the edges to be clean so that your lamination will really blossom. With a sharp knife, slice off some scraps from the edge. You can cook these scraps for chef snacks if you like.

Now, cut the dough to smaller rectangles, around 9"x5". You can see mine are a little narrow but that's ok.

Slice these rectangles from corner to corner to divide each portion into 2 right triangles.

Starting at the shortest length of the triangle, gently stretch the corners and then roll towards the far point.

Arrange your shaped croissant on a parchment-lined baking dish. Cover with plastic wrap and set aside in a warm spot to proof for about an hour. Make sure you leave plenty of room. They will grow!

Preheat the oven to 400ºF.

Combine water, egg and salt. Mix well.

Use a pastry brush to coat the croissants well with your egg wash.

Slide your croissants into the oven. Bake for 5 minutes. Reduce temperature to 350ºF and bake for 20 minutes longer.

What a nice way to start the day. Except you already started your day a couple of hours ago because you wanted to have fresh croissants for breakfast.