Inside Our French Croissant Class: From Dough to Golden, Flaky Layers
- Joel Barda
- 4 hours ago
- 2 min read
There's a moment about three hours into our French Croissant Baking Class when the butter and dough finally come together into that first perfect sheet of laminated pastry — and you can see it click for people. This is what our Sunday class in Maroubra is all about: real technique, taught properly, with the croissants to prove it.
We've run this class for years now (rated 5.0 from over 550 reviews), so we pulled together some of our favourite moments from the workshop floor — dough, butter, hands, ovens and all — to show you what actually happens in the five and a half hours between "let's make croissants" and walking out with your own box of pastries.
What Happens in the Class
This is a proper hands-on French pastry class, not a demo — everyone works their own dough from start to finish. Over five and a half hours you'll:
Mix and knead a classic French croissant dough (détrempe)
Learn to laminate — locking butter into the dough and building the layers through a series of folds and turns
Roll, shape and cut your own croissants by hand
Get a hands-on introduction to puff pastry while your croissants proof
Bake everything fresh and box up your own croissants, danishes and pastries to take home
The heart of it all is lamination — the folding and rolling technique that turns a simple dough into hundreds of paper-thin layers of butter and pastry. It's fiddly, it's a little messy, and it's genuinely satisfying once you feel the dough come together properly.
That's Joel folding a batch of croissant dough on the bench — you'll get plenty of one-on-one guidance to feel exactly how the dough should behave at each stage.
About Chef Joel Barda
Joel has spent over 25 years working with French pastry, trained in Paris and later teaching at Le Cordon Bleu in Sydney. Patisserie Le Marais grew out of that background — a small bakery and teaching kitchen in Maroubra where Joel now runs hands-on classes for home cooks, along with kids', teen and corporate workshops, and a commercial kitchen for hire.
What Our Students Make
We've taught this class for years and consistently score 5.0 from over 550 reviews. Here's a small sample of what past students have walked out with:
Ready to make your own batch of golden, flaky croissants? Join us for a hands-on class right here in Maroubra — small groups, real French technique, and a fresh batch to take home at the end.
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