Yeast crescent rolls with plum butter: soft, buttery, bakery-style
Sixteen crescents from a buttery yeast dough, rolled up from triangles like croissants, only without laminating the butter. A teaspoon of plum butter inside, an egg wash on top for shine. The dough rises twice, bakes in a quarter of an hour, and the kitchen smells like a bakery at six in the morning.
Your own work in that: 40 min.
- Starter and kneading 20 min
- Rising 60 min
- Rolling 20 min
- Rising 30 min
- Baking 36 min
Step by step
0 / 8 doneMake the starter
Crumble the yeast into a small bowl, add a teaspoon of the sugar, 2 spoons of the flour and the lukewarm milk, stir. Leave 10 minutes, until foam forms on top. The starter checks that the yeast is alive: no foam, don't bake, buy fresh.
Ingredients: 500 g plain flour · 200 ml milk · 25 g fresh yeast · 60 g sugar · 2 pcs eggs · 100 g butter · 1 tsp salt · 1 tbsp vanilla sugar
Foam after ten minutes: the yeast is aliveKnead the dough
Put the rest of the flour, the sugar, vanilla sugar and salt in a large bowl. Add the starter and eggs, mix, then knead 8 minutes with dough hooks or 12 by hand. Towards the end pour in the melted, cooled butter and knead until absorbed and the dough is smooth, glossy and comes away from your hand.
TipButter added at the end rather than the start doesn't get in the way of the gluten developing: the dough is fluffy, not dense. Hot butter would kill the yeast, so it should be only warm.
Smooth, glossy, comes away from the handFirst rise
Shape into a ball, put in an oiled bowl, cover with a cloth and leave somewhere warm 60 minutes, until doubled.
Roll out and cut into triangles
Knock back and divide in 2. Roll each on a floured counter into a circle about 35 cm across and about 5 mm thick. Cut like a pizza into 8 triangles with a knife or pastry wheel.
A 35 cm circle, eight trianglesAdd the plum butter
Put a level teaspoon of plum butter on the wide end of each triangle, 1 cm from the edge. Too much filling leaks out in the oven and glues the roll to the paper.
Ingredients: 200 g plum butter (powidła) · 1 pcs egg · 1 tbsp icing sugar
TipThe plum butter must be thick. Runny jam leaks; if jam is all you have, boil it 5 minutes with a spoon of breadcrumbs and cool.
A level teaspoon, a centimetre from the edgeRoll the crescents
Roll each triangle from the wide end to the tip, stretching the tip slightly so the roll is tight. Bend the ends gently into a crescent. Lay on two lined trays tip-side down, 5 cm apart.
Wide end to tip, tip underneathSecond rise and egg wash
Cover with a cloth and leave 30 minutes, until visibly puffed. Meanwhile heat the oven to 180 °C. Brush the risen crescents with beaten egg, thinly and thoroughly, sides too.
Half an hour rising, then eggBake
Bake 16–18 minutes at 180 °C, until golden brown. Without a fan, bake the trays one after the other (keep the second somewhere cooler meanwhile); with the fan on you can bake both at once at 165 °C. Cool on a rack 10 minutes; they are best warm. Dust with icing sugar.
Golden after eighteen minutes
Before you start
Other fillings
Curd cheese beaten with a yolk and sugar, tinned poppy-seed filling, chocolate spread or a piece of marzipan. Always a level teaspoon, never more.
For the morning without a dawn start
Cover the rolled crescents on their tray with film and refrigerate overnight. In the morning take them out, leave 30 minutes in the kitchen, brush with egg and bake.
Hard the next day
Yeast dough stales fast. Keep in a closed container and reheat 3 minutes at 160 °C or 10 seconds in the microwave; they soften again. They freeze well, up to a month.
