Croissants

Doneness

Tops are deep golden brown with a faintly glossy butter sheen; visible lamination layers have lifted and separated (a proper crescent puffs to nearly twice its rolled-up height); the underside is golden-toasted with no pale or doughy patches; the inside flakes cleanly into buttery sheets when torn open (not a soft chewy crumb — that's underdone, give 90 more seconds). A pale top means the centre is still doughy; a chestnut-dark top means the bottom is likely scorched.

Oil & seasoning

No oil in the basket — the laminated butter inside the dough renders during the cook and the basket grate gets buttery. Line with parchment cut to size (corners snipped for airflow) so the rendered butter pools onto the parchment instead of baking onto the basket metal.

Season with: egg-wash brush before cooking (1 egg + 1 tsp water — for the bakery-shop golden glaze), flaky sea salt on top before cooking, everything-bagel seasoning (pressed on top before cooking), shredded cheese rolled inside before cooking (cheesy crescent), ham slice rolled inside (ham-and-cheese crescent), Nutella or jam stuffed inside before rolling (dessert variant), honey-butter drizzle after cooking, split for a breakfast sandwich (egg + sausage + cheese).

Watch out for

• !Line the basket with parchment. Crescent dough renders a noticeable amount of butter during the cook — bare basket grate means the butter pools below, smokes at 320 °F, and bakes onto the metal into a 10-minute scrub. Parchment cut to size (corners snipped) catches the butter and lifts cleanly with the cooked crescents.
• !Leave 1 inch between rolled crescents. They roughly double in volume during the cook — touching crescents fuse into a slab where the contact edges stay pale and doughy. If your basket only fits 4 crescents with proper spacing, run 2 batches of 4 rather than cramming all 8 (each batch only 10 min so total 22).
• !Lower temperature (320 °F) than biscuits (330 °F) is intentional — the laminated butter layers in crescent dough scorch the surface faster than biscuit dough at 330 °F before the centre flakes properly. At 350 °F the tops burn before the centres set. 320 °F is the sweet spot for the lamination to lift without the surface darkening past golden.
• !Bakery croissants (Costco, supermarket bakery, café) are a DIFFERENT cook — they're already fully baked, so they need a LOWER 300 °F reheat for 3 minutes only (longer or hotter dries them out). This entry covers the refrigerator-tube bake-from-raw cook; for bakery-fresh croissant reheats, see the storage note. Do NOT use the 320 °F / 10 min tube recipe on a bakery croissant; it will turn to dry toast.