For those with a metal or marble rolling pin, get your pins in your freezer, along with a sheet pan to chill your dough on, and your metal dough scrapers. It should help to keep the butter in the dough cold

You've seen it all over your feed. The loaf that bakes up with the flaky, buttery, pull-apart layers of a croissant. Except there's no butter block, no three-day pastry school, and no two failed batches before you get it right. Here's the trick: you grate frozen butter right into the dough and fold it in. That's the whole secret. The cold butter makes steam in the oven, and the steam makes the layers. Anybody in this kitchen can do this one. And we're doing it two ways, like always: 🧈 Yeasted, for the same-day crowd. Start in the morning, eat it that night. https://pantry.bakinggreatbread.com/recipes/croissant-bread-yeasted 🌙 Sourdough, for the planners. A longer build and an overnight cold proof for real tang. https://pantry.bakinggreatbread.com/recipes/sourdough-croissant-bread Both recipes land in the Recipe Pantry this week, and we bake together Saturday morning in the working thread. I'll be right there with you, start to finish. One thing you can do today: put a stick of butter in the freezer. Cold butter is the whole game, and we'll get into why this week. So tell me: are you Team Yeasted or Team Sourdough this Saturday? Drop it below. 👇 Perfection is not required. Progress is. Henry ⭐🔥

The classroom lesson for this week's bake is up. (If you find these lessons useful, like and subscribe when it takes you to Youtube please) If you want to understand why the grated butter method actually works before Saturday, this is the place to start. We cover the science of lamination, how to choose your butter, both the yeasted and sourdough paths step by step, and what goes wrong and why. The lesson is in the Classroom under Croissant Bread: The Flaky Loaf. Both recipes are already live in the Recipe Pantry. Yeasted version for same-day bakers, sourdough version for the planners who want to build over a couple of days. Saturday we bake together. Working thread opens that morning and I'll be there all day. If you haven't frozen your butter yet, do it tonight. And we're doing it two ways, like always: 🧈 Yeasted, for the same-day crowd. Start in the morning, eat it that night. https://pantry.bakinggreatbread.com/recipes/croissant-bread-yeasted 🌙 Sourdough, for the planners. A longer build and an overnight cold proof for real tang. https://pantry.bakinggreatbread.com/recipes/sourdough-croissant-bread Both recipes land in the Recipe Pantry this week, and we bake together Saturday morning in the working thread. I'll be right there with you, start to finish. Perfection is not required. Progress is. Henry ⭐🔥

What a lot of bakers don’t know is that the microwave is usually the worst way to get it. You end up with melted spots, cold spots, and a stick of butter that’s half softened and half liquid. Here’s a better way. Fill a tall glass with hot water and let it sit for about 10 minutes. While the glass heats up, stand your stick of butter upright on the counter. Pour out the water, then place the warm glass upside down over the butter. Ten minutes later you’ll have evenly softened butter that’s ready for cookies, cakes, frosting, or whatever you’re baking today. Simple tricks like this save time, reduce frustration, and make baking easier. That’s the kind of practical baking knowledge we focus on inside Crust & Crumb Academy. How do you soften your butter? ~Henry⭐️🔥

We had two of our grandchildren to stay over the weekend and we were asked to have a screen-free visit. I showed the how to make a basic loaf of bread. They are 10 and six and were completely blown away by the whole experience: the way the dough changes and evolves, they kept saying things like ‘but it’s now smooth and stretch, how did that happen?’ ‘wow it’s, grown so much, how?’ ‘Look how jiggly it is’ They learned the window-pane test. I deliberately started to test two early so they could see the gradual change to the dough passing the test. ‘Grandad, that oven is really hot, won’t it burn?’ Why are you putting steam in there?’ all the right questions. When their bread emerged from the oven,I have never see two such proud children. They loved every second and today was spent with them looking for reasons to eat more bread. They took photos throughout and the older girl is going todo a short presentation at school tomorrow on how they made some real bread. They were both bubbling over with excitement, and no iPads in sight for once. Change will be slow but I really enjoyed watching their fascination and joy in the process. This weekend really felt like the start of a quiet revolution. Just two children with their eyes open, but it’s a small step forward. I have already been booked to do it again next weekend!