Homemade Croissants

Published: 10/05/2017Updated: 8/10/2020

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Why bother with homemade croissants? Because they are light and airy goodies with ultra buttery crust, cotton soft interior and beautiful golden color! Plus, you get a huge ego boost looking at your beautiful creations.

Croissants are my biggest weakness. But unfortunately, you won’t find a bakery with amazing croissants around here. Actually, there is no bakery in town. Period!

And the only way I can get my hands on real croissants is to learn to make them myself. Or enjoy them while traveling.

So back in October, 2013, I was on a work trip in San Antonio, TX. While enjoying this delicious croissant for breakfast at the hotel restaurant, I made a promise to myself to never buy a croissant again until I learn to make it myself.

While I didn’t quite keep that promise (I couldn’t resist one at my favorite bakery in Minneapolis!), but I did learn to make some fabulous croissants from scratch later! Yay for me!

I’m not gonna lie to you that it’s a piece of cake to make, because it’s not!

Is it really that difficult? No, not really.

The ingredients and the technique are actually fairly simple. It’s just a time-consuming and needy process that requires your undivided attention a few times over THREE days. But you know what? It’s totally worth it!!

I made my first batch of croissants on April 20^th, 2014. And within a month I made 3 more batches. I thoroughly enjoyed the process and learned a ton! And obviously, eating buttery croissants is nothing to complain about!

We all can agree that anything homemade from scratch always tastes better, right? And these croissants from scratch are no exception!

Extra buttery, flaky crust, cotton soft interior, beautiful golden color and that buttery smell of fresh croissants… Nothing beats that feeling of achievement when you look at your picture-perfect croissants made with your own hands!

Now, you can do this too. I included step-by-step pictures below for you to follow. As I mentioned earlier, it takes 3 days to make these croissants. But before you give up on this idea, hear me out.

The first day, it’ll take less than 30 minutes.

The second day is when the most action happens. You’ll be rolling the dough a few times with two 30-minute breaks in between.

On the last day, you roll the dough one final time and shape the beautiful croissants. And you will be enjoying the buttery goodness in no time.

DAY 1

Day 1 is the easiest. We’ll make the dough and let it rest. Combine all the ingredients and knead until nice and smooth. The mixer is not required; you can easily do it by hand. You need to refrigerate the dough for at least 6 hours, preferably overnight. (I like to make this on Friday night after dinner and enjoy the croissants on Sunday.)

Shape the butter into flat square right after making the dough, so that you don’t have to worry about it the next day. Don’t be tempted to expedite this process by freezing the butter. Frozen butter doesn’t soften easily in the next step, and it’ll only lead to frustration. Refrigerating for at least 30 minutes will do the trick.

DAY 2

On this day, we’ll be rolling the dough with butter. This process is called laminating. Don’t get intimidated by this. It’s actually easier than you think! Once you place the butter inside the squared dough envelop, you will roll it into long rectangle 3 times with 30-minute break in between.

DAY 3

Since my countertop is not long enough, I cut the dough into two equal parts. It’s much easier to roll this way too. You see how many layers you’ve created by rolling and folding the previous day? Those are the layers you will see in your baked croissants!!

Now, just cut into triangles and roll into croissants. You will get 16 big croissants. If you love chocolate, you place a few chocolate squares, or spread some Nutella.

Whenever I make croissants, I plan on freezing some for later, and that has yet to happen. Because everyone at the ranch loves these croissants as much as I do.

But I have frozen two of them (just 2 croissants!) for testing purposes, and they do freeze really good. See freezing instructions in the notes section of the recipe below.

Hope you’ll make these beautiful croissants. Thanks for reading!

This recipe was originally published on May 26th, 2014.

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