---
title: 'Make Perfect Croissants With Claire Saffitz | Try This at Home | NYT Cooking'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=vpwY3nmLLaA'
video_id: 'vpwY3nmLLaA'
date: 2026-07-01
duration_sec: 1796
---

# Make Perfect Croissants With Claire Saffitz | Try This at Home | NYT Cooking

> Source: [Make Perfect Croissants With Claire Saffitz | Try This at Home | NYT Cooking](https://youtube.com/watch?v=vpwY3nmLLaA)

## Summary



## Transcript

i i want to get one thing out of the way
before
we start talking about croissants which
is that i'm going to refer to these as
croissants for the rest of this video
and not croissant okay because i can't
i can't do that every time so excited
hey everyone i'm claire saffits and
today i am showing you how to make
croissants like the highest achievement
in all of pastry gum i don't think i
will ever ever get tired of eating these
so we're gonna make basic all butter
croissants ham and cheese almond
croissants panna chocolate there's
nothing better than a freshly baked
croissant but then like somehow it gets
better when you add chocolate and ham
and cheese i really want to encourage
people to try this at home because it's
fascinating and fun and challenging and
like you might get obsessed like i did
and just make them like 15 times in a
row
for this recipe i
became like a woman possessed about
making croissants i made them at least a
dozen times at home and there is so much
to learn now i'm very like attuned to
the flaws in the recipes that i make but
even at my worst batch they were still
so delicious you can get very very good
results at home like i've never had a
bigger thrill than when i pulled out
eight beautiful golden
like puffy
gorgeous layered croissants from my oven
croissants are in a category of pastry
called vienwazuri and generally speaking
these are pastries that are something
called laminated so laminated is kind of
a technical jargony pastry term
for a layered pastry butter is rolled
into dough rolled out and folded and
rolled out further and this creates a
series of sheets of butter separated by
layers of pastry and that is what
creates this layered crispy effect in
things like puff pastry and danishes and
of course
croissants
there's just so much to talk about in
this recipe if i were editing this video
this would be like a four hour video so
in order to adjust the recipe so that
you are able to have freshly baked
croissants
before noon we do this over two days so
this is like perfect for a weekend
baking project where you'll do the
majority of the work on a saturday and
then sunday morning you wake up you form
the croissants let them rise and bake
them on day two the first step for
making croissants is to make something
called the ditch home and that is the
dough
that we're using that's gonna enclose
the butter for our lamination i'm gonna
say this at every single point in this
recipe this step is very important and
you need a strong dough to support all
of those layers of butter and to
not collapse when you bake it in general
if you can find a flower between 11 and
13 protein that's a good selection
something in that range that's what i
recommend
now i gotta talk about yeast again
so many things to talk about
i'm using acne dry yeast because for
people at home that's by far the easiest
kind to find almost every recipe that
i've made with active dry yeast i'll
tell you to activate the yeast or proof
it which basically means dissolving it
in a warm liquid 99 times out of 100
your yeast is alive and it's fine i'm
pretty confident that you can just mix
it right into the dough i've never had a
problem doing that at home
it's
12.
120 grams of whole milk
the first thing i want to do is hydrate
everything and do an initial mix
so i'm going to start by just mixing
this on low
so this is going to look dry and shaggy
but let the mixer go for a few minutes
and it will come together
so here we have
our initial mix of the dough it like
looks kind of like a cauliflower it's
not smooth it doesn't really have any
elasticity to it you can see it just
breaks but that's okay we want to now
let it rest i want to give time
to the proteins and the flour to hydrate
this is going to help us to develop the
right amount of gluten that we want my
butter pieces here are cold which is
important and i'm going to add these to
the mixer this is the part where it's
more helpful to have the mixer with a
dough hook by hand
it's really the step of adding the
butter that's a little bit more
challenging to do so i'm happy to let
the mixer take care of it
a nice slow mix though is the
one of the keys to the right texture of
dough the dough has transformed you can
see what a different texture it is
it's completely absorbed the butter it's
much stretchier it's a very very smooth
and supple dough and that's what we want
it extends easily and seamlessly
envelops the butter and here's a great
tip so this is something that i picked
up in culinary school
i'm going to cut a slash in one
direction
and then a slash in the other direction
basically reoriented the gluten strand
so that as it rises this will expand and
then i'll have an easier time forming it
into a rectangle which is the shape that
we need for the lamination
and i'm going to let this sit at room
temperature until it's
about 50 percent expanded in size so one
and a half times
and then we're going to transfer to the
fridge and let it chill and finish a
nice long slow rise for a few hours
all right butter
now we're going to talk about butter the
flavor of croissants
is butter so that's where you want to go
for the highest quality stuff you can
find the recipe calls for european or
european style butter that designation
means that there's a higher percentage
of butter fat butter should have some
plasticity which means the ability to
bend without breaking or snapping
kerrygold has that even when it's cold
and as we get into the lamination i'll
explain why that's really important just
going to sort of loosely fold up the
parchment paper
and i have this kind of loose packet and
i'm going to use my rolling pin
to lightly beat the butter i don't want
to like
in order to
soften it without warming it up and make
it pliable
i cannot imagine that my neighbors loved
hearing this noise day in and day out
but then i would at least bring them
croissants the next day so just this
part's a little noisy
and now i want to focus on getting very
clean straight sides and i'm making a
very level block of butter
somewhere around an 8 inch square a
little bit bigger is fine
i would say there's like a surprising
number of recipes where i call for a
ruler
and i'm not i'm not trying to bug you or
like
the reason i'm calling for in the recipe
is because i think if you use it it will
make your life easier down the road like
it like a present
you can see that i've folded the
parchment into a square the butter is
smaller than the parchment and i'm going
to beat it again to fill in all of those
spaces
and at a certain point you'll be able
just to roll without beating it so i'm
going to just move
to a rolling motion and force the butter
into any places within the square
where there's an air gap
you can see that
let this firm up in the fridge while the
ditch finishes its rise
i have a swap it has finished its rise
in the fridge and is now cold and is
basically about doubled in size so i'll
show you what this looks like
you can see how the dough has expanded
and like those four
points have become almost like corners
now so that's going to make it easier to
form into a rectangular shape
and there's just a quick kind of
intermediate step that i want to do
before we move on to lamination and that
is
actually getting this into the freezer
the steaks get higher when we
incorporate the butter we have to
control fermentation of the dough and
that just means that it becomes very
important to control temperature and to
keep the dough very very cold so that
the yeast stay very sluggish and calm
and they don't produce gases that is
going to make it a lot harder to roll
out
if anyone has a great at-home
replacement for plastic wrap for this
purpose let me know i'm going to
actually use a technique similar to the
one i used for the butter at this point
i have to be i'm not like concerned
about thickness or dimensions i just
want it to be even
i don't want to freeze it solid that's
not going to help me when i want to roll
it out i just want to get it super super
cold and firm so about 20 minutes should
be about right
all right
so the next stage is locking in the
butter so it is enveloping the butter in
the dough and then i'm going to roll it
out and do the folds for the lamination
the important thing here
is that
my dough and my butter are a similar
texture and that is going to help the
butter to roll out evenly inside the
dough and for them to be the same
texture i need the dough to be colder
than the butter so that's why we had it
in the freezer in general i want to go
through all the steps of lamination
without adding a whole lot of excess
flour so i'm going to
roll out
my dough or detromp
into a slab that is basically the same
width as the butter block
but twice as long you try to maintain at
all times
your square sides i keep kind of running
my hands under it just to make sure that
it's not really sticking
you can also give it a flip we're
looking for butter that can
bend but not snap i'm going to place it
in the center of my dough
and close the butter in the dough by
folding
the longer sides down into the center of
the butter
you can do any tugging that you need to
in order to even out the thickness of
the dough you do not need them to
overlap you just need them to
meet so you can see i have an even
thickness of dough all the way around
and now i'm going to pinch along the
sides just to prevent the butter from
peeking out i've now locked the butter
in
and i'm going to roll it out and do my
first turn i rotated the dough 90
degrees so that seam running down the
middle of the butter block is now
vertical i'm going to beat the dough to
begin to lengthen the slab and also thin
out the butter
i found that beating it and like paying
extra attention
to
the sides will help keep straight
parallel sides
so periodically lift it up make sure
nothing's sticking
now i'm going to go in with my rolling
pin
and start to roll and i'm going to make
a very long narrow slab
about two feet long the length isn't as
important as the thickness i'm going to
go for about between a half and quarter
inch thick i'm not pressing down if you
press down you risk squeezing out the
butter and fusing the dough together you
know then you won't have that definition
of layers so really it's like an uh
a kind of pushing motion outward and
toward yourself
so this is actually called a double turn
we're going to fold the dough in a way
that quadruples a number of layers right
now i have dough butter dough but when
we fold it we multiply the layers of
butter in between the dough and that is
what gives us the flakiness fold
one end of the dough up toward the
midline
and take the other side of the dough and
fold that down and now i'm going to fold
the entire thing in half crosswise
and this is now called the book so you
can see i have now a slab of dough
that's four
thicknesses one two three four i've now
quadrupled the number of layers in my
slab this is called the first turn and
each time we roll it out and fold those
layers get thinner and they multiply at
this stage the butter is now warming and
the dough is also getting warmer
and we've also worked the dough so it's
going to want to spring back when i go
to roll it out so we want to chill it
before we do get another turn
maybe a little bit of a rolling out
because
the thinner it is the faster it will
chill down i reserve the plastic from
before
you can see that it has firmed up quite
a bit
so i'm going to roll it out and we're
going to do the next turn the second and
final which is called a simple turn so
it's a slightly different orientation
than the first beating with the rolling
pin
it just kind of kick-starts that
lengthening process
so you might find that you have little
air bubbles that's normal that is partly
because of the fermentation partly just
because you maybe had some air pockets
between the dough and the butter you can
just go ahead and pop them
like dust it with flour and then i wipe
the excess off
i'm talking a lot but you also want to
try to go faster than i'm going
[Music]
this time we're doing what's called a
simple turn where i'm folding it in
thirds like a letter so this is just a
slightly simpler method
just like that
you can see that my ends have rounded a
little bit which is a very very common
problem
i'm just tugging on the ends of the slab
to try to square them off so this is
your second turn a simple turn and your
final turn take advantage of the tension
against the plastic wrap
and use your rolling pin to force it
into like a square tape again and to
create sharper corners
the dough slab has been chilling so it's
rested and now the last step on day one
of the croissant process is to roll out
the dough into a slab kind of like a
pre-shaping step it's to get it ready
for rolling and forming croissants
tomorrow you're going to want to spring
back try rolling in the other direction
so roll perpendicular to the direction
you were going and it should extend that
way the dough is starting to resist me a
little bit this is a good time to
wrap it up again get it back in the
fridge and then tomorrow when it's nice
and rested we can roll it out if needed
to the right dimensions and we're going
to cut
roll proof and bake our croissants i
told you it was a process i know it's a
lot but
it's worth it
we've
made the dough we let it rise we
enclosed the butter
we rolled it out
we did the first turn the second turn
and then we left it overnight we're
getting into the really exciting part
where we're nearing the end of the
process so we want to create an ideal
proofing environment for the croissants
this is a really important part of the
process because this is what's going to
determine how light and airy and flaky
your croissants are so we're going to
use our oven to create an enclosed area
for proofing i have a skillet of water
right here i want to get this
to an active simmer and i'm going to
place it in the oven which is our
proofing area
then while we form the croissants the
water will cool off a little bit and all
that steam will make this ideal humid
environment just get really nervous
about this part um nervous excited let
me go grab the dough
so i'm going to give this dough
a bear dusting of flour i mean the bare
minimum
if you see any air bubbles go ahead and
just pop
them be careful when you're moving the
dough so that you're not puncturing any
of the layers
i am ready to start cutting so
the first thing i want to do is
straighten the shorter sides because i
want even size croissants i am measuring
and then making little marks with my
cutter and now i'm just going to use my
ruler and connect those marks on the two
longer sides and slice this into four
even rectangles
these are going to get sliced into eight
triangles and each triangle is going to
be
one crescent
what's the word for a right triangle
the right triangle is that what if
that's called okay so now i have right
triangles i want to make these into
isosceles triangles so anyone that
thinks that trigonometry doesn't help
you later in life just think about
making croissants gonna kind of eyeball
it you end up slicing like a tiny tiny
little triangle off the base you don't
really have to do this but i think it
helps to form more even crescents and
also
it does expose some of the layers at the
base which i like the way that looks in
the final crescent i like to
give it a gentle tug along the short
side also a little tug
to lengthen
almost like a witch's hat like a little
bit of a wider face a long tapered point
so you don't want large gaps by any
means but you also don't want to be
stressing the dough and creating a lot
of tension so i let it rest on the point
of the triangle and sometimes give it
like a little like a little
bop
like that because i want that point to
stick and it's going to rest on the
point stick that right on the baking
sheet
right there and again pour to a sheet
these are going to get really big
[Music]
so i want to go loose on the plastic
because these are going to get extremely
puffy as they rise and i don't want them
to
encounter resistance against the plastic
i did test freezing these but you could
certainly do everything up to this step
put the baking sheets in the freezer you
can even put them all in one sheet
freeze them solid take them out put them
in your proofing setup just like we did
and let them rise when i tested it that
way they took seven hours to proof
totally possible and the ones that i
froze were like one of the best batches
i made we're looking at around
the two to two and a half hour mark so
i'll check on these see how they're
doing and then we'll talk about how do
you know when your croissants are
approved
smiling because i'm very excited so
these have been proofing for
what was it like it's been a while right
three hours two and a half hours okay so
two and a half hours so on the long end
of the range these are proofed to me
they remind me of michelin men they look
like they've been inflated a little bit
the tools that you have to determine if
they're proofed enough they're basically
all visual because we do not want to
touch these they are super delicate
while the oven is preheating i'm going
to uncover these and actually stick the
trays in the fridge one it's going to
slow down the proofing so they don't
over proof while the oven preheats and
second they are going to firm up in the
fridge it's going to make it easier to
apply an egg wash carefully carefully
uncover them because you don't want to
disturb any of the layers
and as i uncover them i can show you
see how there's
a little bit of a wobble
on these guys
when i gently shake the pan that's an
indication that
there is lots of gas in these and they
are proofed we want a beautiful shiny
burnished exterior the best way to get
that is to
brush it with a mixture of egg yolk and
heavy cream basically a half
eggshell is a tablespoon
this gives you both browning and shine
the oven is preheated now we're going to
apply the egg wash you don't want to
poke the croissants at all they are so
puffy and light
that
they're also on the verge of collapse i
don't want to coat the exposed layers in
egg because the egg could fuse them
together and prevent this kind of
separation from happening so i'm only
going to coat the smooth
top surfaces of the croissant with egg
wash i think of in charlotte's web where
like toward the end where wilbur is
getting brought to the county fair and
the farmer's wife base meant buttermilk
it's just what this makes me think of i
think as a child like that image really
stuck with me
someone told me to stop fussing with
them
thank you thank you sometimes i need to
hear that okay we're going to the oven
thank you
okay be gentle be gentle and now
don't touch them
anyone else just want to like sit in
front of this
the whole time and watch them
oh my god it smells so good
if if they could pump this smell into
like every open house with every house
on the market ever a huge spike in house
sales is that things like the challenge
of cookies when people try to buy your
house or whatever oh that's my timer i'm
going to rotate each pan 180 degrees so
that what's in the front of the oven is
going to go toward the back i'm also
going to switch racks so what's on the
top it's going to go on the bottom
bottom to the top this is just all in
service of having all the croissants
brown evenly croissant troubleshooting a
lot of times you don't know when
something has gone wrong in the process
until you bake
so
one thing that happens commonly is the
butter leaks out of the croissants and
pools on the baking sheet during baking
it could be that your croissants got too
warm
during proofing and the butter just kind
of melts out
the other thing is your dough could just
not be super well rested that's another
reason why i like leaving the slab
overnight generally one that's flat but
like wide like a big footprint but flat
means that you over proofed them they
just don't grow a whole lot then you
then you certainly underproof them
you're not having this sort of webbed
even interior that's the sign that your
butter probably got too soft while you
were laminating there's a lot of stuff
here it's like a lot of it's just so
technical and sensitive throughout the
process but
they're going to taste great no matter
what
so i prefer a well done or biancui
croissant which i think these are
none of this like pale
this is too high for me to take this off
sorry
i think
all right here they are
let them cool on the baking sheets
and then
we're definitely
gonna cut into these and see
this one looks great you can see the
spiral there aren't huge air gaps which
i'm happy about and i do have somewhat
of a honeycomb so i'm really happy with
this i think this is a great result for
people at home there are a few baked
goods that i can think of
that hit as many textural notes as a
croissant and it is this miraculous
combination of extremely rich and very
light
plus this
very toasty
shattering
exterior like to me it's hard to think
of a higher achievement of pastry than a
croissant
so once you know the whole method and
process for making the croissanto it
opens you up to being able to make lots
of different variations on the classic
crescent so i'm going to show you how to
do a ham and cheese version and a pano
chocolate or chocolate croissant version
and we're using the exact same dough the
slab is rolled into slightly different
dimensions and i'm going to show you how
to cut and form them and then they proof
the same way the croissants proof so
these are called that tong or batone
these are designed especially for
pena chocolat so i've special ordered
these these are really not something you
can typically find in any kind of
grocery store or even a specialty food
store if you don't want to order them
you can go ahead and use bar chocolate
that we can cut into similar sized bars
these bars
broke when i was carrying them here
but that's okay
and i'm just going to slice crosswise
and i think it actually is easier if you
sort of score it
all right so the scoring and breaking
method to me you get less breakage that
way because obviously chocolate is
brittle and it's going to want to break
up into different pieces these are
slightly smaller so we're going to cut
10 rather than eight this is
the dimensions that i want
i'm gonna mark three inch widths
okay that was weirdly hard but i got it
i'll lengthen it a little bit
place it about between a half
and one inch in from one of the short
ends
then we are going to wrap the dough
around
the stick of chocolate and then right
where you have this seam you're going to
nestle in another stick of chocolate and
keep rolling make sure that chocolate is
fully inside the dough
and then
look at how cute that is
i'm just going to set up another slab
exact same way and show you how to roll
in the ham and cheese you could really
use any kind of thinly sliced ham from
any grocery store in like the deli aisle
already packaged that's totally fine
this is an emmental you could use swiss
cheese you could use gruyere
perfect i want to make sure that i'm
using something around a half an ounce
wow i'm kind of nailing it with these
quantities and then leave a little bit
of a border along the short end so you
can kind of get the spiral going and
then
just fold
they're a little bit like chubbier than
the
kind of chocolate there you go
[Music]
so there's all sorts of things you can
do with steel croissants to revive them
and bring them back and one of my
favorite things to do is make all my
croissants it's like
incredible so they come together pretty
fast i'm gonna toast it so usually a
frangipane doesn't call for this step
but i think it adds a lot of flavor
you're not having to make it light and
fluffy like you would if you were making
a cake that's just not necessary we want
it well blended
it gets that really
intense almondy flavor from extract that
really almost um
i don't know how to describe it
[Music]
i'm going to make my rum simple syrup
simple syrup is just equal parts
water and sugar
take it off the heat
i'm going to add two tablespoons of dark
rum and then i have eight
really old i baked these a couple days
ago croissants they're kind of sad these
this batch i overproof so you can see
they're really flat i'm cutting them in
half like i was gonna make a sandwich
the first thing we're going to do is
soak the cut sides
of all the halves with the syrup when
products like this stale they're losing
a lot of the moisture so we are
replacing some of that moisture that has
been lost
and i'm going to take half of this
mixture and divide it evenly
among
the eight bottom halves of the
croissants spread the frying pan
across the entire surface all the way to
the edges
the lids go back on top
like that yeah the second half of the
franja pen
goes across the tops
you can see this is why i didn't
assemble on the baking sheets because i
have crazy
crumbs and everything and those crumbs
would burn
[Music]
oh god okay
i love these
[Music]
i feel like a baking fairy godmother
here to say that like you can do this at
home
i've never made so many croissants in a
24-hour period
as i have here
feeling very good about all this so here
is my ham and cheese
i don't know i don't really use this
word but these are kind of transcendent
truly
i don't know it's hard to even describe
like so good
this looks like it could come from
bakery
silky is like to me the word that comes
to mind just so good
it looks like kind of a meager amount of
chocolate but the chocolate is a very
very strong flavor so i don't think that
it actually ends up being too little
chocolate
maybe this one's my favorite now i don't
know
if there is anything
that comes close to a freshly baked
croissant it's a twice-baked croissant
it's amazing to take something which is
already so delicious the plain all
butter croissant
and then to be able to transform it into
pastries of this variety
where like one is more delicious and the
next is incredible it's something you
can do and try to perfect for the rest
of your life and along the way you're
gonna eat like a million delicious
croissants and that sounds like an
awesome project i just think i'm like i
don't know i keep like looking down and
get like a little getting a little lost
in my thoughts because this is still
overwhelming um this swirl is
hypnotizing i'm enthralled i hopefully
if you try these at home you're also
enthralled by the process which is to me
nothing short of a miracle
baking is a miracle oh my god i need to
sit down and drink this coffee
you