I know, you might be thinking why would I need this recipe? I am fully aware that you can 100% buy premade crescent rolls EASILY in the store. I like those, I buy them. But you can also buy biscuits or dinner rolls at the store too. Sometimes, making them is more fun and it’s almost ALWAYS more delicious.
What are crescent rolls? They look quite similar to another buttery treat, the croissant. But they are definitely not croissants. If you look over the ingredients you might think, these look like Brioche, but they aren’t quite brioche either.
Crescent rolls are buttery and yeasted, like both but the technique and ratios are a bit different. Croissants laminate the butter into a yeasted dough, so the butter is sandwiched in and rolled into paper thin layers between layers of dough. Brioche uses butter in the dough like crescent rolls, but uses way more eggs than these. All of them are delicious, and if you are looking for a buttery delicious bread, you’ve found one.
Baking Tips
As written, this recipe will make 24 rolls. They are not huge rolls though, so if you’d like less rolls that are a little more substantial in size, I’d recommend cutting the dough circles into 8 sections instead of 12, giving you 16 rolls. When you are cutting the dough, don’t worry if the triangles are not exactly even. Some rolls might be a little bigger or smaller, but not enough to mess with baking times.
When you are baking them, I would put the tip of the dough towards the sheet pan (you can see above in the shot of them on the baking sheet). Because the end of the dough is thin and small, it is more likely to burn or heavily brown before the rest of the roll. Putting it on the bottom shields it from being the closest thing to the heating element in the oven.
You can use a knife or a bench cutter to cut the dough into wedges, but I find something like this pastry cutter (this is the one I have) or a pizza cutter quicker and easier to use.
Crescent Rolls Key Ingredients
- Butter – This recipe uses about a half cup of butter in total. The majority goes into the dough, but then some is also brushed on before shaping, and then after they come out of the oven.
- Milk – Milk adds more tenderness to bread doughs than water does. It can cause the dough to take a little longer to rise, but the small extra time is worth the flavor boost. Make sure to use whole or 2% milk.
- Eggs – These crescent rolls are a very enriched dough. They have eggs, butter, milk and sugar. All of those result in a soft, buttery, delicious dough.
Ingredients
- 480 g Bread flour 4 cups
- 36 g Granulated sugar 3 tbsp
- 7 g Sea salt 1¼ tsp
- 8 g Instant yeast 1 tbsp
- 2 large Eggs room temperature
- 165 g Whole or 2% milk ⅔ cup + 1 tsp, warm ~ 105°F
- 112 g Unsalted butter softened & divided into 5 tbsp/70g and 3 tbsp/42g
Instructions
- In the bowl of your stand mixer with the dough hook attached add your flour, sugar, salt, yeast, eggs and milk. Mix on low until the dough comes together.
- Add in your 70g/5 tbsp of butter one tbsp at a time while the dough is being kneaded. Let the butter be worked into the dough before adding the next.
- After all the butter has been added, let your dough continue to mix and knead until smooth and elastic (8-15 minutes).
- Remove your dough from the bowl, and lightly grease the bowl. Shape your dough into a ball, place it into the bowl and cover.
- Let your dough proof in a warm spot in your kitchen for 1-2 hours, or until the dough has at least doubled in size.
- Line two baking sheets with parchment paper, set aside.
- Punch down the dough, and divide your dough into two portions. Weighing your dough will help ensure the portions are equal, but this is not a must do.
- Roll out each portion of dough into a 12 inch circle. If the dough is not wanting to roll out enough, let it rest (work on the other piece of dough) and come back to it after 5-10 minutes and then roll out again.
- Melt your remaining 42g/3 tbsp of butter and brush onto your dough circles. Save any remaining butter.
- Divide each circle into 12 wedges. I found it easiest to divide into quarters then each quarter into thirds.
- Starting at the wide end, roll your piece of dough into the crescent roll shape.
- Place the prepared rolls onto the prepped baking sheets and cover. Let proof for about 30 minutes, rolls should puff up.
- Preheat your oven to 350°F.
- Bake for about 12-14 minutes or until rolls are golden. If baking the rolls on two different levels of your oven, switch the pans half way through the bake.
- Remove your rolls from the oven and transfer to a wire cooling rack. Brush them with the remaining butter while warm. Enjoy!
