Flaky, buttery croissant bread requires time, precision, and patience, but is a very rewarding baking project that will make your kitchen smell like a French boulangerie. (And is there any better smell than fresh bread?) I know making homemade pastry can seem intimidating, but I thoroughly break down the process for you, step by step, in the tutorial below. Any home baker—like me or you—can accomplish this.
Croissant bread is exactly what it sounds like: croissant dough baked as bread. My inspiration for this recipe was this croissant loaf on Food52, but I used a scaled-down version of my own homemade croissants dough to produce just 1 loaf. Though I can’t promise how long your loaf will last… it doesn’t last long in my house! The other difference in my croissant bread recipe is we’re going to roll up the dough first, and then cut into rolls, instead of cutting strips and individually rolling them.
The result is an impressive loaf version of everyone’s favorite yeasted pastry, which smells and tastes like a croissant, but slices like bread. Incredible on its own, but try it as a grilled cheese, BLT, toasted with jam or honey butter, or in your favorite breakfast strata recipe or French toast casserole!
You need just 6 simple ingredients for the croissant bread dough: flour, butter, salt, yeast, milk, and sugar. The 7th ingredient is an egg to make an egg wash for brushing over the top to get that glossy golden sheen on the top of the loaf—much like pie crust and stromboli.
Laminating dough is the process of folding butter into dough many times, which creates multiple alternating layers of butter and dough. (Similar to how we make biscuits, cheddar biscuits, and rough puff pastry, though today’s dough includes yeast.) When the laminated dough bakes, the butter melts and creates steam. This steam lifts the layers apart, giving us dozens of flaky, airy, buttery layers.
In my regular croissants, chocolate croissants, and homemade cruffins recipes, we mix butter and flour together to make a butter block. With today’s croissant bread recipe, however, we’re lining pieces of butter down the dough so there’s no compact butter block needed.
Here is the dough after the 1st rise and then after you punch it down:
Now it’s time to flatten the dough and prepare it for lamination. Gently flatten the dough out into a 10×14-inch (25x35cm) rectangle using lightly floured hands to carefully stretch the dough. I recommend flattening it right onto a nonstick surface so you can literally pick it all up without the dough losing shape. Refrigerate this flattened dough for 20 minutes:
After 20 minutes in the refrigerator, the dough is about as pliable as the butter.
1st lamination: Fold one side over the butter:
Fold the other side over that, like you would fold a business letter:
Rotate the dough so the long edge is facing you:
Roll out into a 9×12-inch (23x30cm) rectangle. You can see the butter hiding in there:
Fold up like a business letter, cover, and then chill for 20 minutes:
2nd & 3rd lamination: After refrigerating, repeat lamination process above 2x with no dough chilling between each—rotate dough, roll out, fold like business letter, rotate dough, roll out, fold like a business letter. And then chill 1 last time for 20 minutes.
Final lamination: After that final refrigeration, repeat lamination 1x. Then roll out the dough into a 9×12-inch (23x30cm) rectangle for the last time:
Roll it up like a jelly roll cake or cinnamon rolls dough, starting from the shorter end:
Slice into 5 thick rolls. Look at all those layers!
Arrange in a greased loaf pan, cover, and let rise until puffy. Then brush with egg wash before baking:
. Despite following the exact same recipe and directions, some of my test loaves looked more airy, or less flaky, or more layered.. So don’t be discouraged if yours looks different… just wait until you TASTE it!
Bakers of any skill level can use this thoroughly detailed recipe to make a beautifully flaky and golden brown loaf of homemade croissant bread. There are 3 rounds of 20-minute refrigerations. Do not break up the lamination steps and do not extend the refrigeration times because the dough will begin to over-expand.
