How To Bake Cinnamon Rolls To Give Them A Croissant-Like Texture

Homemade croissants can feel like a feat of advanced baking. But with one extra step, you can bake cinnamon rolls with a flaky, croissant-like texture right in your own kitchen. All you have to do is master the simple method behind mixing butter into your cinnamon roll dough.

As Benjamin Delwiche — known on TikTok as Benjamin the Baker — shares in his cookbook, "Dessert Course," you can achieve crispy, flaky, layered cinnamon rolls by rolling out your dough, placing a block of butter in the center, and enveloping the dough around it. Then, the repeated rolling and folding of the dough creates layers of butter through a technique called laminating. When the dough then goes into the oven, the heat melts the butter which releases water. These water molecules evaporate to create steam, which gets stuck in the web of gluten and serve to build the layers.

If you mix the butter in with the other ingredients at the same time, you'll achieve a brioche-like consistency with your cinnamon rolls. Alternatively, freezing small cubes of butter, rolling them into the dough with a rolling pin, and folding before baking actually melds both techniques together, resulting in cinnamon rolls that are light and fluffy, with a flaky crust.

If you're looking for a new take on your go-to breakfast treat, you can make the swap to sourdough cinnamon rolls. Sourdough relies on starter that's made from a combination of different flours and water — instead of yeast. Incorporating it into cinnamon roll dough will give you buttery and fluffy rolls with a slight tang.

But even if store-bought pastry is more your thing, there are steps you can take to make canned cinnamon rolls taste like they were made from scratch. You can top your cinnamon rolls with heavy cream before they go in the oven. This method adds oomph to your rolls, making them extra moist and gooey. Still another way to jazz up canned cinnamon rolls is to add a fun topping. Whether it's in place of the icing that comes with the rolls — or in addition to it — you can sprinkle some nuts on top or drizzle some caramel, chocolate, or any other sweet sauce of your choice.