How mumblescafe.com Makes Croissants From Scratch

Most cafes sell croissants delivered in a plastic bag at 7am. You can taste it immediately — soft where they should be flaky, pale where they should be golden, flat where they should be layered.

At mumblescafe.com, our croissants take 72 hours to make. They start on Sunday night for Tuesday morning. The process involves French butter, a precise lamination technique, a long cold proof, and a bake timed to the minute every single morning from 5:30am.

This guide explains exactly how we make our croissants from scratch — every step, every decision, and why each one matters to what you taste. If you have ever wondered what separates a genuinely great croissant from everything else on a Melbourne cafe counter, this is the answer.

How does mumblescafe.com make croissants from scratch?

Every croissant at mumblescafe.com is made using a 72-hour cold fermentation process with French cultured butter and locally milled flour. No shortcuts, no pre-made dough, no delivered pastries. Here is the breakdown:

Dough: Made fresh every Sunday and Monday using locally sourced flour, fresh yeast, and full-fat milk
Butter: French cultured butter with 84% fat content — not standard supermarket butter
Lamination: 27 layers of butter folded into the dough across three separate fold sessions
Proof time: 72 hours cold fermentation in the refrigerator before shaping
Final proof: 3–4 hours at controlled temperature after shaping before baking
Bake: 200°C for exactly 18–20 minutes — timed to the minute every morning from 5:30am

What Makes a Croissant Genuinely Good?

A croissant is a laminated pastry. That word — laminated — is everything. Lamination means alternating layers of dough and butter, created by repeatedly folding cold butter into cold dough. When the croissant hits the oven, the water in the butter turns to steam and pushes the layers apart. Those layers are the honeycomb structure you see when you tear one open.

A croissant made correctly has dozens of distinct, paper-thin layers. Each one is crisp on the outside and tender inside. The exterior should shatter when you bite it — not bend. The interior should pull apart in long, glossy strands — not crumble like bread.

Most croissants you eat in Melbourne do not do this. They are made from pre-laminated frozen dough purchased from a supplier, thawed overnight, and baked in the morning. The result is soft, uniform, and flavourless. It looks like a croissant. It is not one.

What real lamination requires:

Temperature control throughout. The butter must stay cold enough to remain in distinct layers rather than absorbing into the dough. If the butter gets too warm at any stage, it melts into the dough and you lose the layers entirely. This is why croissant production at mumblescafe.com happens in our coolest kitchen hours — early morning, refrigerator rest between every fold, no rushing.

Time. Real croissant dough needs time to develop gluten structure, rest between folds, ferment slowly in the cold, and then proof again after shaping. Our 72-hour process is not a marketing number. It is the minimum time required to do this correctly.

The Full 72-Hour Process at mumblescafe.com

Our head chef Dom Pereira has been making croissants professionally for over a decade. The process we use at mumblescafe.com is his — developed over years of testing, adjusted for our specific kitchen, our flour supplier, our butter source, and Melbourne’s humidity and temperature patterns.

Sunday Evening — The Dough

Everything starts with the dough. We combine locally milled plain flour with fresh yeast, full-fat milk, sugar, salt, and a small amount of softened butter. The dough is mixed until it just comes together — not over-worked, not under-mixed. Over-mixing at this stage develops too much gluten too early, making the dough resistant to lamination later.

The dough goes into the refrigerator immediately after mixing. Cold fermentation overnight develops flavour compounds that fast-proofed dough never achieves. By Monday morning, the dough has a complexity that you can smell when you open the refrigerator door.

Monday Morning — The Butter Block

We use French cultured butter with 84% fat content. This matters for two specific reasons. Higher fat content means less water in the butter — less water means less steam escaping at the wrong time during baking, which means more controlled lamination. Cultured butter has a deeper, more complex flavour than standard butter — that flavour transfers directly into every layer of the finished croissant.

Dom pounds the cold butter into a flat rectangle — approximately 20cm by 20cm — using a rolling pin. The butter needs to be pliable but still cold. If it cracks when you bend it, it is too cold and will shatter through the dough during lamination. If it bends without cracking, it is at the right temperature.

In my experience watching this process hundreds of times, the butter temperature decision is the single most critical skill in croissant making. Get it wrong and the entire batch is compromised before the first fold.

Monday — The Three Fold Sessions

Lamination happens in three separate sessions across Monday, with refrigerator rests between each one.

Session one — the butter block is placed in the centre of the rolled dough, the dough is folded over it like an envelope, and then rolled out to a long rectangle. This rectangle is then folded in thirds — like a business letter. Back into the refrigerator for 30 minutes minimum.

Session two — the same fold repeated. The dough is now starting to build its layer structure. You can see the butter marbling through the dough when you look at the cut edge. Back into the refrigerator.

Session three — final fold. By this point the dough has 27 distinct layers of butter running through it. The dough goes back into the refrigerator for its final overnight rest.

Twenty-seven layers is not arbitrary. Fewer layers produce a bread-like interior without the honeycomb pull-apart texture. More layers — some recipes push to 81 — compress the butter too thin and the layers merge during baking. Twenty-seven is the point where individual layers remain distinct but connected.

Tuesday Morning — Shaping and the Final Proof

At 5:30am, Dom rolls the laminated dough to a precise 4mm thickness. He cuts it into long triangles, stretches each triangle gently from the base to elongate the layers, then rolls them from tip to base. The roll needs even tension — too tight and the layers cannot expand during the final proof and bake. Too loose and the croissant unravels.

After shaping, the croissants rest at a controlled temperature of 26–28°C for 3–4 hours. This final proof allows the yeast to produce gas that pushes the layers apart gently before the oven does it forcefully with steam. You can watch them grow visibly during this time — they expand by roughly 50% in volume.

The Bake — 200°C for 18–20 Minutes

Our oven is preheated to 200°C — convection, not static. The croissants go in cold from their final proof environment and the oven temperature drops slightly as they load. This temperature transition is intentional. The gradual heat increase in the first few minutes allows the butter layers to set before the steam fully activates.

At around the 12-minute mark, the colour starts to develop — pale gold first, then deepening. The full 18–20 minute bake produces the mahogany exterior colour that signals correct caramelisation. Underbaked croissants are pale and soft. Overbaked ones are dark and bitter. The 2-minute window between perfect and slightly too much is real and unforgiving.

We pull them at exactly the right moment, every morning, without exception.

What You Taste and Why

The 72-hour process produces flavour that cannot be faked or rushed. Here is what is actually happening in your mouth when you eat a mumblescafe.com croissant.

The exterior shatters. That sound and texture comes from the rapid dehydration of the outer layers during baking — the butter and dough merge into a paper-thin, glassy shell. If it bends instead of shatters, the layers were not distinct enough or the bake was insufficient.

The interior pulls apart in strands. Those strands are the laminated layers separating along the butter lines. Each strand should be slightly glossy — that sheen is residual butter that did not fully absorb into the dough. It is also why a good croissant feels rich without being heavy.

The flavour develops in stages. First you taste butter — immediate, clean, dairy-forward. Then as you chew, the fermentation flavour emerges — slightly tangy, complex, nothing like plain bread dough. Finally a caramel note from the crust lingers. Three distinct flavour moments from one bite.

Dom describes it simply: “A croissant should taste like the best version of butter you have ever eaten. If you cannot taste the butter clearly, something went wrong — the fermentation masked it, the lamination failed, or the butter quality was not there to begin with.”

Why most Melbourne croissants disappoint:

The delivered frozen dough model is not a failing — it is a rational business decision for cafes that are not primarily bakeries. Keeping a trained pastry chef in the kitchen from 5:30am every day to produce one pastry item is a genuine investment. Most cafes cannot justify it.

At mumblescafe.com, the decision to bake in-house was made at the beginning and has never changed. It is not cost-effective in the narrow sense. It is completely necessary to the standard we set for everything we serve.

Common Croissant Myths and Mistakes

Myth 1 — A good croissant needs to be eaten warm

Warm is better but it is not the only correct way to eat a croissant. A properly made croissant maintains its texture for 2–3 hours after baking. The layers stay distinct, the exterior stays crisp, and the flavour actually develops further as it cools slightly. A croissant that only tastes good hot was probably under-proofed and the structure is hiding behind residual heat.

Myth 2 — More butter means a better croissant

Butter quality matters far more than quantity. A croissant made with European cultured 84% fat butter uses no more butter than one made with standard 80% fat supermarket butter — but the flavour difference is enormous. Cultured butter adds a lactic tanginess that complements the fermentation flavour of the dough. Standard butter tastes flat by comparison.

Myth 3 — The layers you can count determine quality

The number of visible layers is a misleading quality signal. A 27-layer croissant made with proper temperature control will taste better than an 81-layer croissant made with butter that was too warm. What matters is whether the layers are distinct — whether the butter remained a separate element from the dough all the way through the process.

Myth 4 — Croissants can be made quickly if you know what you are doing

No. The timeline is set by biology and chemistry, not skill level. The yeast needs time to ferment. The gluten needs time to relax between folds. The butter needs time to return to the correct temperature between lamination sessions. Skilled bakers make the process more consistent and efficient — they cannot make it faster without sacrificing the result.

Myth 5 — A croissant with visible layers on the outside is always well-made

Visible exterior layers — the defined spiral pattern on the surface — are a cosmetic indicator, not a quality guarantee. They show the shaping was done correctly. They say nothing about whether the lamination, proofing, or bake was executed properly. Judge a croissant by how it sounds and feels when you bite it — not how it looks on the counter.

Read More: Discover Mumbles Cafe’s New Seasonal Specials (2026)

FAQs

Q: How long does it take to make a croissant from scratch?
A proper from-scratch croissant requires a minimum of 48–72 hours. The process includes overnight dough fermentation, three separate lamination fold sessions with refrigerator rests between each, an overnight cold rest after lamination, and a 3–4 hour final proof after shaping before the 18–20 minute bake. There is no shortcut that produces the same result.

Q: What butter is used in professional croissants?
Professional croissant bakers use European cultured butter with a minimum of 83–84% fat content. The higher fat content produces cleaner lamination with less water interference. The cultured fermentation adds a complex, slightly tangy flavour that standard butter cannot replicate. At mumblescafe.com, we use French cultured butter at 84% fat for every batch.

Q: Why do bakery croissants taste better than supermarket ones?
Bakery croissants made from scratch use a lamination process with real butter that creates distinct layers — the honeycomb interior you see when you pull one apart. Supermarket croissants are made from pre-laminated frozen dough using margarine or low-fat butter substitutes, proofed and baked quickly. The difference in flavour, texture, and structure is immediate and significant.

Q: How do you know if a croissant is good quality?
Bite into it and listen. A properly made croissant shatters — you should hear it. The exterior should be deeply golden, almost mahogany. The interior should pull apart in glossy, layered strands. The flavour should taste clearly of butter and have a slight complexity from fermentation. If it bends silently and has a bready interior, it was made from frozen dough.

Q: What flour is best for croissants?
Plain flour — also called all-purpose flour — with a protein content of around 11–12% works best for croissants. High-protein bread flour develops too much gluten, making the dough tough and resistant to rolling. Low-protein cake flour produces a structure too weak to hold the lamination. At mumblescafe.com, we use locally milled plain flour sourced from a Victorian supplier.

Q: Can croissants be reheated at home?
Yes. Reheat in an oven at 160°C for 4–5 minutes — not a microwave. A microwave steams the croissant and destroys the crisp exterior permanently. The oven re-crisps the layers and brings back close to the original texture. Avoid reheating more than once as the butter begins to absorb fully into the dough and the layered structure collapses.

Q: What time are the croissants ready at mumblescafe.com?
Croissants at mumblescafe.com come out of the oven between 6:00am and 6:15am Monday to Friday and between 7:00am and 7:15am on weekends. They are available while stock lasts — we do not hold them back or reheat for later service. Early arrival gives you the best selection. We sometimes sell out before 9am on weekends.

Conclusion

A croissant made from scratch over 72 hours is not a luxury item. It is the minimum standard for what a croissant should be — and once you have tasted one made this way, you will understand immediately why the delivered frozen version never satisfied you.

At mumblescafe.com, Dom is in the kitchen every morning from 5:30am. The butter is French. The flour is local. The process takes three days. Every single batch is made this way — not because it is easy, but because it is the only honest way to serve a croissant.

Come in early. Order it plain first — before the almond version, before the jam. Eat it at the counter while it is still warm. Listen to it shatter. That sound is 72 hours of work.

Craftsmanship in every cup — experience it at Fitzroy’s finest specialty cafe.