Croissant Bread Loaf Recipe Video

What is Croissant Bread?

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!

Croissant Bread Details

Texture: The texture of this croissant bread is melt-in-your-mouth soft and tender, with a crispy, flaky crust. Because it’s baked as bread in a loaf pan, it’s not quite as layered and crust-shattery (technical terms) as croissants, but it’s still very airy. Flavor: Blissfully buttery and slightly sweet—just try to keep your eyes from closing when you taste this, I’m not sure it’s possible! Ease: The great news is that making croissant bread is easier than making individual croissants. It requires no special ingredients, but it does require 3 rounds of 20-minute refrigerations and 2 rises. For these reasons, I categorize this as an advanced baking recipe. But I’m here to walk you through each step. You can absolutely make this! Time: Plan for this recipe to take just under 6 hours, plus some cooling time, which is considerably shorter than 12+ hours for my individual croissants. There’s resting time between most steps, which means most of the time is hands off. To develop all those flaky pastry layers, croissant dough needs to rest in the refrigerator often. It likes to nap, if you will.

Only 7 Ingredients Total

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.

What is Laminated Dough?

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 and chocolate croissants 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.

Video & Photos: How to Make Croissant Bread

The full printable recipe is below, but this recipe involves quite a few steps, so I’m going to walk you through it with step-by-step photos. I’m leaving out photos of preparing the dough because you can see it come together in the video tutorial. I also have a separate video tutorial for How to Knead Dough, if you need extra help with that step. 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. Line the butter down the center third of the dough as pictured: 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:

No Two Loaves Look the Same

Keep in mind that your loaf may look exactly like or slightly different from these photos. Despite following the exact same recipe and directions, some of my test loaves looked more airy, or less flaky, or more layered. You can see the variety in these photos. So don’t be discouraged if yours looks different… just wait until you TASTE it!