USA🥐 Croissant Bake-Along Reminder: Beating the Heat 🥐🔥

⭐

🔥

4th of July weekend edition

Croissants tomorrow, and I won’t sugarcoat it.

A big chunk of the country is sitting under a heat advisory right now, so this bake starts on hard mode before we even touch butter. Lamination is a cold-weather craft, and your kitchen is working against you.

That’s fine. We plan around it.

❄️ Here’s the rule for tomorrow:

Cold butter. Cold dough. Cold hands.

Heat is the enemy of every layer you’re trying to build.

A few things that will save your bake:

🧊 Clear a shelf in the fridge tonight

Don’t wait until your dough is warming on the counter to go shuffling jars around.

Make the space now so when it’s time to chill, you just slide it in and walk away.

🧈 Learn the bend test

Your butter block should bend, not break.

Pull it from the fridge a few minutes early and press it.

If it cracks and shatters, it’s too cold and will tear right through your dough.

If it’s greasy and soft, it’s too warm and will squeeze out the sides.

You want it pliable and cool, like cold modeling clay.

⚠️ Watch for the warning signs

If the butter starts to grease out, if it tears through the dough, if the layers smear instead of staying distinct, or if the dough goes slack and sticky, stop.

That’s your dough telling you it’s too warm.

Wrap it, chill everything 20 minutes, and come back.

You are laminating, not fighting.

🥶 The fridge is your friend. The freezer is not.

I know the instinct in this heat is to slam everything in the freezer to catch up fast.

Don’t.

The freezer chills the outside hard while the center stays soft, so you get uneven dough that behaves worse, not better.

The refrigerator cools it evenly all the way through.

Slower is the whole point.

⏱️ Plan your rests

Build extra chill breaks into your day tomorrow.

In this weather you’ll need more of them, and that’s not a failure.