Laminated dough formulas: croissant, Danish and puff pastry beurrage ratios and layer counts

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Formulas, not just technique

The companion article A6-laminated-dough-fundamentals explains why lamination works — alternating sheets of dough and fat, steam pushing them apart, the melting fat frying and sealing each layer so they cannot stick back together. This article is the recipe book: complete, tested formulas you can scale and put on the bench tomorrow.

Every formula here is written in baker's percentage, the universal language of professional formulas. Flour is always 100%, and every other ingredient is expressed as a percentage of the flour weight: ingredient % = (ingredient weight ÷ flour weight) × 100. Hydration is just the liquid expressed the same way. The pay-off is that one formula serves a 500 g test bake and a 100 kg plant run — only the flour weight changes.

The one number that defines a laminated dough is the beurrage ratio — how much roll-in fat you carry relative to flour. Quote it two ways and you will never be confused: as a % of flour (the formula figure) and as a % of the total package (what you weigh on the bench). A croissant at 56% of flour is only ~24% of the finished dough.

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Three doughs by the numbers

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The technique is shared; the formula is what separates the three classics. See the comparison table below for the full grid.

The puff family is classified purely by fat: full puff uses equal weights of fat and flour (1:1), three-quarter puff 75%, half puff 50%. The hard floor is half — go below ~50% of flour and the layers fuse, the dough cannot rise, and you have made a brick.

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The croissant formula

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A croissant is a moderately enriched yeasted dough laminated with a butter block. The worked example below is the Weekend Bakery classic French croissant converted to baker's %:

Hydration (water + milk) is 56%; the beurrage is 56% of flour = 23.8% of the total package; yield is ~15 croissants at ~78 g each pre-bake. Mix to a smooth, not fully developed dough (22–25°C), retard overnight, lock in the butter at matched plasticity, then 3 single folds with 30-minute chills, sheet to 3–4 mm, shape, proof at 24–26.5°C for ~2 h and bake convection 195°C→165°C or conventional ~220°C.

For a richer, more open crumb, swap the three single folds for one letter + one book fold (~25 layers) — King Arthur showed that fewer folds keep the butter thick enough to make separating steam, giving a defined honeycomb instead of a tight, cell-like crumb. King Arthur's own bakery formula scales the same idea to 24 croissants from ~1.8 kg dough with a 425 g butter block.

Flour is the quiet decision. You want a medium-strong, extensible flour — strong enough to hold the layers, not so strong it snaps back and tears during sheeting. From the catalogue, FWP Matthews Windrush sits at 12.0–12.5% protein (target 12.2%) with a Hagberg falling number of 250–400, and GoodMills Type 750 at ~11% protein, wet gluten min 28% — both in the sweet spot. Butter is Polmlek Unsalted 82% (min 82% fat, 16% water — and that water is part of the steam lift), or the dedicated Agart Tourage Croissant Butter. In a warm bakery, reach for a roll-in margarine instead (see below).

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The Danish formula

A Danish (wienerbrød) is a croissant taken richer — more sugar and an egg — so it eats softer and a touch chewier. The worked example below blends soft and strong flour to dial back the strength:

Hydration is 45% (milk + water), rising to ~53% if you count the egg as liquid; the beurrage is 50% of flour = 21.3% of the package, which sits squarely in the authentic 40–60% Danish window. Method: chill the mixed dough 12–16 h, 3 single folds with 90° rotation and 30-minute chills, shape (spandauer, windmills, combs), proof 2–3 h and bake 220°C for 16–18 min.

Because the sugar load is high, the yeast works against osmotic pressure. Dose ~2% dried active, or switch to about 1% osmotolerant instant for cleaner, more reliable gas production in sweet doughs — see A2-osmotolerant-yeast-enriched-doughs. Fresh Lesaffre Benevia (dry matter >29%, fermentative activity 125 ± 10 ml CO₂) is the bench standard.

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The puff pastry ratio card

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Puff pastry (pâte feuilletée) is unleavened — steam does 100% of the lifting — so the formula is almost all about the fat ratio. The détrempe is constant; you simply choose your puff class (formula card below). Worked full-puff example at 1 kg flour:

For three-quarter puff use 750 g of fat (75%); for half puff 500 g (50%). The détrempe carries about 10% soft fat rubbed into the flour and ~50–55% water, and everything stays cold — dough 2–7°C, room 10–20°C. Give six single turns (or three book folds), resting 15–30 minutes between sets, which builds 729 fat layers (3⁶). Bake at ~220°C. King Arthur's tested classic puff is effectively a three-quarter puff — 510 g flour détrempe with a 396 g (77.6%) butter block — proof of how the ratio card maps onto a real recipe.

In a hot kitchen, fat choice rescues the formula. Kruszwica Maestra Puff Pastry Margarine 80% holds an SFC of 33–37% at 20°C and is worked at 18–20°C — wider and more forgiving than butter's 12–16°C window. For the warmest plants, Cardowan Crown NHAV has a slip melting point of 47°C and is fully vegan with all 14 allergens absent. Puratos Mimetic 32 and Argenta are further roll-in options.

The fast alternative: rough/blitz puff

When time is short, skip the butter block. Cube cold fat into the flour and fold it in directly (formula card below): flour 100%, butter or shortening 70–75%, water 59%, salt 0.5–1.0%, lemon juice 1.0%. Four single folds give ~81 layers — less soaring than classic puff, but a fraction of the work.

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Counting layers and scaling the formula

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The maths is simple once you fix the convention (comparison table below): a single (letter) fold ×3, a book (double) fold ×4, and dough layers = (2 × fat layers) + 1. From one enclosed fat sheet, three single folds give 27, six give 729. (The simple multiplication slightly overstates the functional layer count because folding presses dough onto dough; the Universal Numbering System subtracts those dough-touching points — see A6 for the full discussion.)

Scaling is equally mechanical. To hit a target dough weight, sum all the percentages, divide the target by that sum to get a conversion factor, and multiply each ingredient by it. The croissant détrempe totals 179.6%; to make 5 kg of détrempe the factor is 5000 ÷ 1.796 = 2784 g of flour, and every other ingredient follows. Or simply scale by flour: a 500 g test batch × 20 becomes a 10 kg production batch with the same percentages — water 2800 g, roll-in butter 5600 g, and so on.

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Pain au chocolat: same dough, different shape

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Pain au chocolat is not a new formula — it is the croissant dough (see the croissant formula card) cut into rectangles and rolled around chocolate (formula card below). Sheet to 3–4 mm, cut ~10 × 15 cm (4 × 6 in) rectangles, lay a bake-stable chocolate baton near the edge, roll once, add a second baton, and finish seam-side down. Commercial professional batons typically weigh 8–10 g each; dark couverture batons from the catalogue run ~44–70% cocoa (Terravita 70%, Callebaut 811 at 54.5%). From the catalogue use PGD Dark Chocolate Sticks 8 cm (purpose-made batons) or cut Callebaut 811 / Terravita 70% couverture to size. Allergen note: commercial dark chocolate batons almost universally contain soya lecithin (SOY) and many carry a milk may-contain advisory — verify each product's current specification before labelling. Proof and bake exactly as croissants.

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Faults that live in the formula

Most lamination faults are handling and temperature (covered in A6), but several are recipe problems you fix on paper, not at the bench (see the fault table below):

• No rise, layers fused → beurrage below 50% of flour; raise it to at least half puff.
• Heavy, greasy, low → too much fat for the structure, or fat smeared warm; drop toward three-quarter puff and respect the working temperatures.
• Tears and snaps back → flour too strong / under-hydrated; professional references recommend a medium-strong flour in the ~10–12.5% protein range (BAKERpedia: 10–11%; catalogue options such as Windrush and GoodMills T750 sit at the upper end of this band, 11–12.5%); also raise détrempe hydration and lengthen the rest between folds.
• Tight, cell-like croissant crumb → too many folds; cut back to ~25 layers.
• Fat leaks at the base → proofing above the fat's melting point; proof ≤26°C, or use a high-melting-point fat in warm conditions.

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Food-safety and allergen note

All numeric specs above come from first-party supplier spec sheets, but allergen and nutrition data must be confirmed against current batch documentation before labelling. In particular: Polmlek butter contains MILK; Kruszwica Maestra (a 2009 spec) lists soya lecithin and a may-contain milk warning — this allergen data is 17 years old and MUST be re-confirmed in writing before any labelling use; the détrempe flours (Windrush, GoodMills T750, Komplexmłyn T550) contain gluten with a soy/lupine/mustard contamination risk — lupine cross-reactivity is clinically significant for peanut-allergic individuals; Benevia yeast carries sulphites in its production molasses (below the labelling threshold, but operators catering to high-risk groups should request quantified SO₂ data from Lesaffre); and pain au chocolat chocolate batons (PGD Dark Chocolate Sticks, Callebaut 811, Terravita 70%) typically contain soya lecithin (SOY) and may carry a milk may-contain advisory. The 14 declarable allergens follow Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011. Treat every allergen and nutrition figure here as provisional pending verification.

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Coverage report

Solid: the beurrage ratios, hydrations, fold schemes and layer maths are cross-checked across King Arthur, BAKERpedia, BakeInfo (trade body) and the supplier specs, and every formula card's internal arithmetic has been verified. Five formula cards (croissant, Danish, full/three-quarter/half puff ratio card, rough puff, pain au chocolat) cover the laminated canon.

Thinner: the full/three-quarter/half puff classification leans partly on lower-reliability recipe sites, though it is corroborated by the BakeInfo trade body. Product-specific numerics (SFC, slip melting point, protein, falling number) are single-source first-party spec sheets — appropriate as product data but not independently cross-checkable, hence specs_cross_checked: false.

Follow-up: confirm Kruszwica Maestra's current allergen/nutrition data in writing before any labelling use; add a sourdough/levain croissant variant and an inverse (inversé) puff ratio card in a later pass; cross-link to the planned A8-bakers-percentage-fundamentals and A8-scaling-and-yield-conversion articles once written.