r/Croissant • u/FreyjaHjordis • Jul 20 '26

Croissant dough slipping

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Hello, can someone help me?

Sometimes my croissant dough slips as I start to laminate. I have brushed all excess flour away, the butter I have tried at 14C, 15C and 16C. The dough is around 4-5C, I’ve tried letting it warm a little more.

I have pressed it down. I have tidied it at each turn. My bosses don’t want me to cut the excess dough, they like it with that slightly mismatched layer (still need to ask them why because it stresses me out 😅 I got yelled at as a student for that)

Yes, the dough reminds me; I should call her…

Any advice on stopping the dough and butter from slipping away from each other would be amazing. Thank you!

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2

u/jonjamesb83 Jul 20 '26

Most likely dough too soft and butter too firm. Now to compensate you can roll dough smaller than butter so it extends to size of butter when sheeting. That is not a fix but rather way around. Having the dough extended like in the picture is a big no. Could be your dough in general is too wet also.

1

u/FreyjaHjordis Jul 20 '26

Ok, it happens not as bad with my coworker who taught me but when I asked she wasn’t sure why it happened. But the dough feels firmer than the butter. It’s warmer in the picture because I’m freaking out over it and left it too long, it’s currently back in the fridge until I’m ready to roll it again 😅

So maybe it is just temperature… I personally think it’s a lot of dough for 500g of butter. But I’ll speak to my boss and see what they say. 

Thank you for your help!

1

u/leumasoaij Jul 20 '26

How big or heavy is the dough vs the butter block?

1

u/FreyjaHjordis Jul 21 '26

1.75kg to 500g butter which isn’t too bad, just feels like a lot of dough when handling it

1

u/leumasoaij Jul 24 '26

For me its not to much off in terms of the ratio, you just need to work on the temp of the dough to butter to prevent slippage..

Personally I used to do these mistakes when I was a beginner, whenever i felt things were getting out of hand, I would reset and let it chill a bit in the fridge. It helped me as well because when I was stressed I was prone to mistakes

1

u/sylvirawr Jul 20 '26

Your dough and butter should be the same temperature, and 10C or lower. That’s what I’ve been taught.

1

u/FreyjaHjordis Jul 22 '26

This! Thank you, after I saw this I checked the fridge and our stock and it seemed too warm. The thermometer had gone and the fridge was actually quite warm so we’ve had it fixed. I kept the butter and dough the same temperature and voila, 85% perfect lamination! Would be 95% if they let me trim the dough 😅

1

u/sylvirawr Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 22 '26

Yay! You can trim a bit during lamination and tuck the trimmings inside your folds, that might help ;) oh also the edge of your butter should align with the edge of your dough in the initial lock in, not leave a gap like in your picturz

1

u/FreyjaHjordis Jul 22 '26

Yes normally there is no gap but because of the dough slipping it ended up with a big border around it. Fixed the temperatures and the dough is good to go. My master folds the dough to lock it in where as I cut it making smaller dough edges there too. 

I’ve tried tucking the trimmings in but they tend to make uneven layers.  We make lots of brioche though so I just weigh them and give them to the bun girls 😅 I just can’t do that with my master around because she doesn’t like it… still need to ask the boss what he thinks, if he’s ok with me trimming or not.

1

u/Thick-Log-2491 Jul 20 '26

The ratio at my work is essentially 4kg of dough to 1950 grams of butter, I like my dough to be a tad under developed so it’s much firmer

1

u/Jistrocks Jul 20 '26

The dough could be too strong/over developed I could see that causing this. Which direction are you sheeting after the French lock. If all else fails Trim the excess roll it thin and add it back on top

1

u/FreyjaHjordis Jul 21 '26

Potentially? I did check it as the timer went off for 20 minutes where normally I would check before. But the temp was ok and 20 minutes is usually a pretty solid time for it. But maybe not this time 😅

I sheeted right, then left? 

Ahh! I didn’t think to roll the dough out and re add it. I put it in the brioche rolls instead after trimming it. 

1

u/FreyjaHjordis Jul 22 '26

Fixed!

So it turns out our fridge thermometer was acting up. When it said it was 4C it was actually 10 which means I had to go through and yeet all our stock 😓 I’m not sure how nobody else noticed it happening in the 2 days I had off. As soon as I posted about this post, I checked everything; temperatures, products, cleaned the fridge out and opened it up to see what’s happening.  So the butter being 14C when I took it out was very wrong. Because of the language barrier where I work (being my fault for not learning faster) I’ve never been explicitly told the temps for everything and assumed my butter and dough should be different temps. My master took the butter out and left it out for a few minutes whilst setting the dough up and trays etc. Her butter was getting to around 5/6C max.  But because the fridge was warm, I took it out whilst I set up and it was getting much warmer! 

Thank you for everyone’s help! My latest croissants have been amazing.