6 Croissant Mistakes Bakers Make & How to Fix Them

That means I made 4 batches of doughy, greasy, but somehow still tasty, brioche buns (butter rolls) that somewhat resembled croissants.. before I made a real “croissant”.

And since I couldn’t give a damn about my reputation, I posted the above photos to Threads, (Meta’s rival to Twitter [X? whatever.]) asking for advice from other bakers. I was greeted by a couple thousand lovely comments & reposts from french people saying they’d throw up over my plate if they could. (roughly paraphrased)

While I can interpret this as the internet taking its rare chance to trash on a stranger to perk themselves up, I also don’t get how anyone could possibly (genuinely) hate someone for attempting something so goddamn hard.

Allow me to briefly summarize why making a croissant is such a royal pain in the a$$:

1. Dough consistency

2. Butter pliability

3. Dough fermentation

4. Dough-butter lamination

5. Baking temperature & time

To put things into perspective, for your regular bread loaf, you only need to worry about 2 out of those 5 things. That’s 60% less the neurotic precision needed.

So in my case, we can add a 6th element of f*ckery into the above list: sourdough culture strength.

If you’ve never baked bread before, this list probably doesn’t mean jack.

So let’s clarify exactly what goes wrong when one of the 6 elements fail:

1. If croissant dough is overkneaded, underkneaded, has even 1 tablespoon too much or too little water, is too warm or is too cold at any point of the process, croissant becomes a brioche.

2. If butter has too little fat in it, is too hard, is too soft, is too warm, is too cold at any point of the process, the croissant layers will fuse together. Croissant becomes a brioche.

3. If croissant isn’t proofed long enough, is proofed too long, OR if yeast is not active enough, or yeast is too active, butter will melt into (or out of) the croissant dough. Croissant becomes a brioche.

4. If, while rolling out the layers of butter and dough, you push down too hard, roll in the wrong orientation, don’t roll out enough, roll too little, you can tear the croissant layers or fuse the butter with the croissant dough. Croissant becomes a brioche.

5. If you bake your croissants at too high or too low a temperature, for too long, or too short, butter can leak out of croissant or fuse with dough. Croissant becomes a brioche.

6. If sourdough starter is too weak, or you put too much or too little, or you use the wrong feeding ratio, croissant won’t have layers. Croissant becomes a brioche.

It truly does feel like dog piss when you put in a day or two, and 2 grocery trips worth of premium ingredients to make a batch of croissants, only to come out with a token of “failure”.

But if we’re really honest with ourselves, how often have we pushed ourselves to failure in any aspect anyway?

Looking back, I’m proud of myself for even bothering to attempt this at home. Even moreso for being comfortable enough in my skin to share my “fails” with the internet (even if it didn’t help me much in the end).

I had no practical reason to “master” croissants, especially as a full-time student with a completely non-culinary degree in business analytics. But I wanted to push myself mentally and see if I could.

5 attempts and 3 months later, I can finally — confidently — say that I can.

Hard work may not pay off in all aspects of my life. At least with learning to make croissants, it sure as hell does.