Well, here we are. Bake day. And it landed on the Fourth of July, so let’s make something beautiful today. 🇺🇸 Most of you have your dough or your butter blocks resting in the fridge right now, which means the hard part is behind you. Today’s the payoff. We shape, we proof, we bake. Here’s the game plan: 🥐 Pull your dough, roll it out long, cut your triangles, and shape ⏳ Proof until puffy and jiggly. This is the make-or-break step, so don’t rush it. French folks, you’re looking at a couple hours. Sourdough, yours runs longer, 3 to 5, so be patient with it. 🔥 Egg wash, then bake to a deep mahogany. Pale is underbaked. Let that color build. Now, two things about the heat. 🎇 First, the real one. This heat wave across the country is dangerous, not just uncomfortable. Drink your water, stay cool, and check on the older folks and neighbors around you. Your bread can wait. You come first. Take care of yourselves out there. 🇺🇸 Second, that same heat is sitting in your kitchen. Your final proof has to stay under 78F or the butter melts and weeps out before the croissants ever hit the oven. Find the coolest room in the house. If your kitchen’s running warm, the fridge is still your friend, use it to hold the proof steady. Keep a close eye today, because in this heat they can over-proof faster than you’d think. This thread is home base all day. 🎆 Post your progress right here. Your shaped croissants, your proof, your first tray out of the oven, your crumb shots when you cut in. And if you hit a snag, butter leaking, dough fighting you, proof looking off, drop it in the comments and I’ll walk you through it. I’m around all day. Let’s bake, everybody. 🇺🇸🥐 Perfection is not required. Progress is. Henry ⭐🔥🇺🇸

🥐✨ This Weekend We Laminate ✨🥐 Alright, you all asked for it... so we're doing it. Now before anybody panics, I want you to think about where you've already been. This isn't some giant leap. It's simply the next step on a staircase you've already been climbing. 🧈 Remember Brioche Week? That's where you learned to handle butter. Adding it one piece at a time. Watching for the break. Keeping it cool so it works with the dough instead of against it. That was your foundation. 🥮 Then came Babka. You learned that cold, firm butter holds its shape, while warm butter melts into the dough and ruins your layers. Classic Sourdough Croissant: https://pantry.bakinggreatbread.com/recipes/sourdough-croissants Yeasted Croissant: https://pantry.bakinggreatbread.com/recipes/classic-french-croissants Keep the butter cold. Keep the layers distinct. Sound familiar? That's lamination in plain clothes. 🦓 Then there was Zebra Bread. Stack. Fold. Roll. Repeat. Every fold multiplied the layers. Chill before you roll. Go easy on the flour. Roll it with confidence. You've already done those movements with your own hands. ✨ Croissants are simply all three of those skills coming together. 🥐 Butter control from brioche. 🥐 Cold butter creating layers from babka. 🥐 Fold-and-roll technique from zebra bread. You're not starting from scratch. You're putting together things you already know. ❤️ We're gonna go slow, one fold at a time, and I'll walk you through every single step. 🛒 Before Saturday, gather a few things: 🧈 Good butter. The higher the butterfat, the better. European-style if you can find it. 🌡️ A cool kitchen, if you've got one... and a little patience. ⚖️ Your digital scale, because we're weighing everything. Bring your questions. Bring your nerves. Bring your butter. By Saturday afternoon you'll be holding something flaky, buttery, and golden that you made with your own two hands.

Morning, bakers. Today's the day. Pull up a chair, this thread is home base. Here's how it works. Drop your photos, your questions, and your wins right here in the comments as you go. I'll be in and out all day answering. You don't have to keep up with the clock, jump in whenever you start. Before you start Three recipes, pick your lane: 🥨 Classic yeasted, the fast one, about two hours start to finish 🌾 Sourdough, the flavor play, for those who fed a starter 👧 Kids version, simple bites, pull the little ones in All three are in the Recipe Pantry. The one thing every single one of them needs: the baking soda bath. That's what makes a pretzel a pretzel. Today's rhythm 🕐 Mix and rest your dough 🕑 Shape, don't fight the gluten, let your ropes rest in rotation 🛁 Thirty seconds in the bath, quick in, quick out 🔥 Bake at 425 until deep golden brown 🧈 Butter the second they leave the oven, salt while wet so it sticks Drop in the comments 📸 Your dough, your shaping, your bakes, all of it ❓ Any question, no matter how small 🆘 Stuck? Tag me right here and I'll walk you through it I baked a full batch yesterday and took a pile of notes I'll be sharing all day. First pretzel always looks rough. By your fifth, it clicks. Ugly pretzels taste just as good. Let's bake. 🥨 Perfection is not required. Progress is. Henry ⭐🔥

Since we’re working with croissant dough for Croissant Week inside Crust & Crumb Academy, I wanted to give you a few ways to play with the same dough once you’ve got it laminated. You don’t have to stop at classic croissants. You can turn that same dough into: 🍫 Pain au chocolat 🥐 Almond croissants 🧁 Cruffins The infographic walks you through the options, with a closer look at how to shape pain au chocolat from the same laminated dough. Same dough. New pastries. More ways to practice those layers. Keep your dough cold, don’t rush the proof, and have some fun with it. If you ask Dr. Bob nicely he may laminate these for you. @wiliam ~Henry⭐🔥

Hey everyone, 🌾Quick note from inside the Academy. You probably know I sold bread at farmers markets for years. Three years ago I wrote a book called From Oven to Market. Over and over inside this Academy I see the same pattern: home bakers who can bake bread that beats anything on a grocery shelf, who keep getting derailed when they think about actually selling it. Cottage food law, market booth setup, pricing, and the fact that nobody can drop $3,000 on a freelance website just to find out if there's actually a customer waiting. So they don't try. Or they try once and quit. 🌾I built From Oven to Market to fix that. https://skool.com/from-oven-to-market It opened yesterday as its own Skool community, separate from Crust and Crumb Academy. Different room, different conversations. Pricing math. Cottage food law, state by state. Market booth setup. Real numbers from real bakers. People at every stage, from "I'm just thinking about it" to "I sold out before noon last Saturday." 🌾Here's what's inside the community: https://skool.com/from-oven-to-market The new From Oven to Market classroom with nine course modules covering everything from foundations and cottage food law to the true cost of a loaf, insurance and risk, your exact farmers market kit, looking like a pro, the customer connection toolkit, market day sales, the AI-powered storefront builder, and scaling without burning out. Access to Recipe Pantry Pro recipes that scale from one loaf at home all the way up to a 24x market batch, with cost and margin math on every single one. A monthly Market Kit. One seasonal recipe pre-costed and priced. A print-ready cottage food label that meets the standard requirements. A market-angle playbook on what actually sells that month. And a one-page cheat sheet on a common legal or customer question. Periodic tips on bread science, fermentation, scoring, troubleshooting. The same plain-talk teaching you already know from me.