Croissants have had more column inches recently than any breakfast item has a right to expect. Yet these airy suspensions of butter and pastry flakes have not attracted good publicity. There have been rants about supersized croissants as big as a small dog (just say “non”), complaints about influencers dunking their pastries into cappuccinos (café au lait, s’il vous plait) and righteous indignation about bakers repurposing day-old specimens as almond croissants.
Perhaps it’s no surprise that sales are on the up, with one in every dozen breakfasts in the UK featuring croissants, pain au chocolat or the like. Lidl says the all-butter version from its in-store bakery sells at a rate of 122 croissants per minute.
No one is claiming that pastries are a health food – some contain nearly half the recommended daily maximum of saturated fat intake. But given that we probably ought to be saving these for a Sunday breakfast treat or the occasional brunch with friends, I want to make it worth it by indulging in only the very best croissants I can get my hands on.
Many of the supermarket offerings, especially the kind that come individually wrapped in multipacks, tend to be soft and bready rather than delicately layered. Many have ingredients lists loaded with additives like palm oil, mono- and diglycerides of fatty acids, flavouring, colouring, and more. And don’t imagine that a smaller croissant means fewer calories or less fat – what they lack in size, they make up for in density, often packing the same calorific punch as their larger, posher relatives. Happily the top end of the selection, containing just flour, butter, sugar, salt and yeast, plus egg brushed over for shine, yielded some good options.
All croissants soften as they sit (although unwrapped, in-store bakery varieties somewhat less so). To restore the delectable flaky layers, I gave all the croissants a few minutes in the oven to warm through – an air fryer on low would do the job too.
The taste test
Not flaky at all – it’s a bap in croissant’s clothing. Plenty of weird UPF ingredients too. Not worth the calories, never mind the saturated fat.
There’s a nice flakiness and the inside is a promising primrose yellow. Sadly it’s stodgy, and it doesn’t actually taste buttery despite that sunny hue – because guess what, there’s not actually any butter in them. What there is, is palm fat, rapeseed oil, emulsifiers, flavouring, thickener – and colouring. Nul points.
Very stodgy and sweet, with no proper layers. There’s some richness, but it’s a very disappointing breakfast, one laced with palm oil, emulsifiers, flavouring and the rest.
The texture is bready, not flaky. It’s not rich and there’s only a suggestion of butteriness – unsurprising given there is more palm fat in here than butter, plus emulsifiers, thickener, flavouring, acidity regulator and colouring.
Quite bready inside. Papery layers but no buttery flavour – very dull. The stuff of railway stations, but at least the ingredients are all recognisable.
Aeroplane food, and I’m not talking business class. Only a hint of butteriness and stodgy in the middle. But the ingredients list is UPF free, so it’s getting a point for that at least.
All butter isn’t a guarantee of quality. These are small and puffy, and the flavour is oddly not buttery at all, despite the 20 per cent butter content. On the upside, the ingredients list is UPF-free.
These look very slipshod, like the baker really couldn’t be bothered. They taste sweet and bready, though there is some flakiness. The ingredients list is very unappetising – definitely ultra processed.
Sweet and bready, with no proper layers. The ingredients are pretty terrible too, with palm oil, emulsifiers, flavouring and colouring.
Looks sad, like it was pulled out of a bag on an aeroplane. No proper lamination, bready and dull. It’s vegan though, so you wouldn’t expect butter.
There’s layering and a nice stretch to this, so you can pull the soft middle out. It’s still a second-rate hotel breakfast but more butter flavour than some, and nice crumbly flakes. The best of these low-grade croissants, with the usual rubbish ingredients list.
Looks nice and crisp with some layering. The flavour isn’t great, sadly – and I’m not tasting butter, even though there is decent lamination.
A long skinny croissant, quite neat. But it’s a bit tough, not flaky. The ingredients list is fine though.
Nice and plump, this one looks appetising, if a bit dark. Sadly the dough in the middle tastes raw, and it’s not as buttery as I had hoped.
There’s a nice sound when you break this one, and the layers are present and correct. Shame the flavour is very dull.
A long and authentic feeling croissant with a bit of flakiness, as well as good pull and structure. But the flavour is one of rancid butter – they’ve clearly opted for an over-cultured version.
The Andy Murray of croissants, very long and skinny, if slightly inconsistent. Decent flakes and richness. Another one with a well-cultured butter, which gives a very cheesy flavour, but a better choice than the M&S versions.
Nice and glossy and flaky. Somewhat untidy layers but they are real – a decent bit of lamination. Slightly sweet flavour, but there’s a good ingredients list.
Tidy looking with a good balanced butter flavour that isn’t over cultured. The texture is nice and rich too, although not quite five-star level, as it’s a touch tough.
A generous, fat-looking croissant with lovely lamination and a gently buttery flavour. It’s not super rich, so you’d want this with jam and butter, but it has a super airy, tender texture.
This burnished beauty looks the part, even if it is a little flat. It’s properly laminated so a tug on one end pulls out a spiral of tissue paper-thin layers, gleaming with butter. The taste is buttery too – it’s 33 per cent butter – and there’s a drift of crisp, deep gold flakes left on the plate. The in-store bakery ones are equally good.
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