---
title: 'FLAKEY HOMEMADE CROISSANTS (Beginner Friendly)'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=mT4cqHc4HqU'
video_id: 'mT4cqHc4HqU'
date: 2026-06-30
duration_sec: 819
---

# FLAKEY HOMEMADE CROISSANTS (Beginner Friendly)

> Source: [FLAKEY HOMEMADE CROISSANTS (Beginner Friendly)](https://youtube.com/watch?v=mT4cqHc4HqU)

## Summary



## Transcript

hey what's up i'm not gonna lie making
croissants at home is fussy
it's time-consuming and it took me a lot
of tries to get this process figured out
but
the final product is so good that it's
definitely worth
a little bit of struggle so today i'm
gonna show you how to make a flaky
buttery hand rolled croissant at home
and a few tricks along the way so that
you can get these right
first try to get started i've got my
stand mixer set up and into the bowl of
that i'm going to measure 165 grams of
warm water 165 grams of whole milk 8
grams of yeast 50 grams of sugar 515
grams of all-purpose flour and 10 grams
of salt the dough hook goes on and i
like to mix this dough in two stages the
first of which happens on medium speed
for roughly two to three minutes all
we're looking to do here is to get that
water and milk to hydrate the flour
once things have come together and the
dough starting to get pushed around the
bowl like this i'm going to grab 40
grams of softened butter and start the
second stage of this mix
as you can see the butter is cubed up
into smallish pieces so that i can add
them in one piece at a time
this should help the butter get better
incorporated into the dough but
inevitably there will be some smeared
butter stuck to the inside of the bowl
and don't sweat that eventually the
dough will start to grab it all now that
that butter's in the dough we actually
need to
knead this stuff so the speed's gonna go
up to high and i'm gonna continue to mix
this for five
whole minutes and if you're wondering
hey bry
can i do this by hand well yes but it is
gonna be harder start by crumbling the
butter
into the flour as best you can then mix
the dry with the wet that's the water
and the milk that's gonna take a second
to come together and then we can flip
the dough
out of the bowl and start to knead by
hand on the cutting board for six to
seven minutes this is gonna replicate
that high speed mix that we're doing
over on the stand mixer this is messy
work and it's gonna be kind of greasy
but if you really go for it you're gonna
get something that resembles dough from
a stand mixer for
sure and there we go hand mixed
croissant dough
if you dare back to the mixer this has
been mixing on high speed for five
minutes and the dough is clearing the
bowl and should be quite strong but
there's only one way to know for sure so
i'm gonna flip this up and give it a
good tug to see how we like it and it
doesn't tear or sheer and that means the
gluten is ready to rip now i'm gonna
flip this over into a medium bowl and to
give ourselves a more uniform starting
point for when we sheet this dough later
we're gonna get this rolled up into a
nice taut round ball and the move here
is just what we do for most of these
stretch
and folds on our dose we're just trying
to tuck that ball into a nice taut
little thingy
yeah that looks good now i'm gonna put
the lid on and throw it on top of my
refrigerator out of the way
for 90 minutes in the meantime when you
sort out probably the most
important part of a croissant the butter
block for that i'm starting with two
large sheets of parchment paper i've got
a ruler here as well and then a clicky
pen to make some lines with now on the
tops of that parchment paper i'm gonna
make two points in the center eight
inches apart and then from there i'm
gonna use the ruler to throw down two
straight lines that are going from the
top and the bottom to show where i want
my butter to sit next i'm gonna fold
deep creases into the parchments on the
two lines that i just drew this is gonna
help hold that butter in tightly then
i'm gonna fold the top in about an inch
or two and then the bottom another inch
or two and there we go we should have
two roughly eight inch by 12 to 14 inch
tall
rectangles now for the butter this is a
whole block or roughly 225 grams of
grass-fed
irish butter called kerrygold and it is
82 butter fat you can definitely get
away with regular butter but it might
take a few attempts to actually get to
the point where you're laminating the
dough if you don't do this right you end
up making a
brioche which is still good but not the
same thing as a croissant this butter's
been sitting at room temp for about 45
minutes so it is soft and well tempered
but it is definitely
not mushy this is in the perfect spot to
make a butter block okay to get this
butter rolled into a sheet that we can
actually laminate into a dough we're
going to lay down this block of butter
into the center of that parchment that
we just folded and then cover that with
the second piece of parchment and then
smash this block down just a little bit
flatter
into a smear of butter now i'm going to
fold up all four sides of this parchment
paper to seal in the butter so that when
we roll it out
nothing escapes then i'm going to flip
it over so that the folds are facing the
board and now i've got a nice
square flat compartment that's going to
help shape our butter block using
rolling pin now i'm going to beat this
butter down laterally to flatten it and
to start to spread it out i'm going to
be using this move a lot from this point
forward because
when we're shaping large chunks of
butter it responds way better to blunt
force like this than
the rolling pressure of a rolling pin
once things are flat we can actually
start rolling with the rolling pin
and see why the folding was worth all
that extra effort the rolling pin
easily pushes this butter directly into
the perfectly square corners of this
paper
and it is so extremely satisfying when
you see it fill that corner the work is
worth it just for that
once this butter's been pushed into all
four corners and spread into an even
thin layer with no voids or cracks take
a look it's malleable and bendy and it's
gonna be much easier to incorporate into
a dough for now i'm gonna throw this
into the fridge and keep it frosty until
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sponsoring this video back to the dough
it's been 90 minutes and this dough is
about doubled
it's gassy it's buoyant and alive now
hit the top with some flour then my
cutting board and then flip out the
dough once i've got this pushed into
a rectangular-ish slab of dough i'm
gonna dust it with some more flour and
then grab my rolling pin to start to
roll this out i'm gonna get this thing
pushed out until it's roughly 18 inches
tall and eight to nine inches wide this
is a little bit of a pre-shape and it's
going to allow us to push this dough and
butter further in a few minutes next i'm
going to lay down some parchment so i
can fold this dough in half without it
sticking to itself then
onto a sheet tray it goes this does room
temp right now and it needs to be much
cooler for lamination so in the fridge
it goes for 20 minutes and in the
meantime
out of the fridge comes that butter
block that we made earlier it's very
cold and brittle at the moment but 20
minutes at room temperature will make it
bendy like it was before 20 minutes
later the butter block should be
much more pliable but it's always good
to unwrap and check before we move
forward if there was one key to
successful croissants at home it's
keeping the butter in this pliable state
moving forward cold hard butter is bad
malleable flexible butter
is very good all right my slab of dough
is good and frosty after 20 minutes in
the fridge and now i'm gonna roll this
out just a little bit more i want it to
be about 18 to 20 inches tall and about
eight to nine inches wide
and notice i'm doing my best to kind of
maintain right angles around the edges
here but
don't worry about it we aren't really
going for perfection now i'm gonna size
up my butter sheet and it needs to be
slightly less wide than the dough
that looks pretty good so i'm gonna flip
it on over you'll notice that this
butter only covers about two-thirds of
this dough and that's by design the
first folding here is kind of a cheat
we're gonna get our butter locked into
the dough
and our first two layers of folding done
at the same time this gives us more time
in the temperature sweet spot and
overall simplifies the lamination
process
a lot now to do this fold i'm gonna grab
the top third of the dough and fold it
over
the middle third then i'm gonna grab the
bottom third and fold it over that when
i turn it you can see how we have two
layers of butter in this dough already
and we didn't need to work the dough at
all and the butter hasn't really changed
temperature yet which
is ideal now i'm gonna smush this down
with the rolling pin a little bit to
help seal in the juices then on the open
side i'm going to seal things up with a
firm pinch from top to bottom
if this butter got loose in my cutting
board it would be a mess now i'm feeling
good about where the temperature of this
butter is and i don't think it's really
had enough time to get
too warm and mushy yet so we are going
to move forward with the second fold at
this point again i prefer using the
blunt force of the rolling pin to do
most of the work when the dough is thick
like this it helps
spread the butter more gently too much
downward pressure in a localized spot
with the rolling motion will press the
butter into pockets and
that's not very chill once this slab is
gently coerced into an eight inch wide
16 18 inch tall slab yet again
i'm going to do a book style fold this
time the right side gets folded into the
middle then the left side gets folded
into the middle and then that whole
thing is going to get folded in half
and we've basically just quadrupled our
layers without any additional
rolling this is just another thrifty way
to simplify the lamination process to
save time and hence preserve the
temperature of the butter we basically
get two folds worth of layers in one
move okay i've got this book shape
flattened back into a slab but the
butter starting to get warm and the
dough is starting to snap back a little
bit so i'm going to throw this into the
refrigerator so the dough can relax and
this butter can firm up just a little
bit so into the fridge it goes
for 20 minutes after that 20 minutes the
butter temp has been reset to that fully
malleable spot and the dough has relaxed
enough for us to actually roll it thin
into a croissant so the board gets
dusted and the dough is gonna get dusted
on both sides then using a rolling pin
we're gonna gently pound this
even flatter i'm gonna give this four to
five passes until it's about half as
thick as when we
started and if you see some air bubbles
in there go ahead and pop those i'm
going to use a cake tester to prick them
and then use my rolling pin to push out
that gas i'm going to roll this out in
two stages if we do too much work here
the dough is going to start to get tight
and we can't roll it out anymore and the
butter is going to get too soft so once
we're at a 12 inch by 16 inch ish
slab i'm going to pop this back in the
fridge for 15 minutes after that 15
minutes we're going to move into the
second half of shaping where we push
this out that last 30 to 40 percent i
want to reiterate don't use downward
pressure of the rolling pin
too much banging it with the rolling pin
makes things move a little bit faster
and keeps that butter a little bit more
intact
cut to what happens when the butter is
just a little bit too cold and use just
a little bit too much downward pressure
from that rolling pin
as you can see butter shards the butter
is completely cracked and broken and
this is a super
unfun thing to happen so beware cutting
back to the slab i've got it rolled out
into a quarter inch thick sheet that's
about 14 inches tall and 18 to 20 inches
wide
and don't worry centimeters for all of
this will be in the description now i'm
gonna square up the edges real quick
then using a ruler i'm gonna mark every
four inches or so on the bottom
then on the top i'm gonna move in two
inches and then mark every four inches
this is gonna create
eight total croissants now using a pizza
cutter i'm gonna cut these into
even triangles the best i can hopefully
by the time you get to the end your
eighth croissant won't look as rugged as
mine does but it doesn't really matter
all the hard work here is done in the
lamination
and if these aren't perfect whatever now
i'm gonna stretch these out a little bit
i want to add two to three inches of
length then
once they're stretched i'm going to go
to the wider end and stretch that about
another inch this is going to give these
croissants a pro
tapered look from there i'm going to
roll this up tightly trying to keep the
skinny end in the dead center i also
like to try and keep the tip of the
croissant tucked onto the bottom as well
now i'm going to move this over to a
sheet tray lined with parchment paper
and i'm gonna roll out the other seven
and i'll mention feel free to freeze
half of these once they're rolled out i
would freeze them on a plate and then
move them over to a bag for storage then
the next time you want a croissant all
you need to do is thaw them
proof them and then bake them off once
these are rolled out now we need to
proof them up so i'm going to move them
over to my oven where i can create a
mini little proofing cabinet to do that
i've got a shallow saute pan full of
boiling water and i'm going to load it
into the bottom of the oven that steam
is going to warm up the box a few
degrees and keep
things just a bit humid so that nothing
dries out proofing time is going to vary
pretty widely depending on the
temperature of your dough
and your house but mine took 90 minutes
to get fully proofed up and
take a look these look amazing now i'm
going to pre my oven to 425 degrees 218c
and while that heats i'm going to head
back over to these proof chrissies and
egg wash them
two times to make that i just cracked
one egg and added about 20 grams of
whole milk and stirred it up that little
bit of milk in the wash is going to help
with caramelization because
milk salads brown very nicely after 20
minutes we're going to brush them for a
second time
and also double check that they're proof
properly give them a poke that dough
should indent just a little bit and then
pop back out slowly
these look very good once we have two
full coats of egg wash and
the oven is preheated into the oven they
go for 18 to 20 minutes
if we got that proof right these should
start to rise quite a bit and start to
unfurl all those layers
an underproof croissant will leach out a
lot of butter and not really
rise at all 10 minutes in we're going to
rotate and flip these trays to get a
much
more even bake as we know most ovens
have hot and cold spots and when we're
dealing with butter and sugar combined
in a dough these can go from perfect to
burnt quicker than we'd like that last
eight to ten minutes should pass pretty
uneventfully but
resist the urge to pull these out too
early channel your
inner bry here and bake these dark
blonde croissants just aren't as good as
well tan ones
i know from experience after 18 minutes
in the oven it's time to pull these
things out
and all i can really say is wow they're
burnished with a deep
golden brown crust and as you can see
all those layers of butter have teamed
up to make a flaky but delicate
pastry this smell you guys the smell is
just
insane i've cooked a lot of tasty things
here in my house but
none of them have smelled like this
sweet european butter
layered with care and baked perfection
is just amazing when i cut into one you
can see
how flaky these actually are like i said
these are not the easiest things to get
right they're fussy and there can be a
lot of trial and error but
in the end when you get there you have a
warm fresh
flaky buttery croissant that was made
by you and they're world class you guys
let's eat this thing
[Music]