Pillsbury dropped frozen croissants with 48 flaky layers — here's the taste test
Pillsbury's crescent rolls have been a dinner-table shortcut for nearly 60 years, but the brand just gave them a much flakier sibling. New Pillsbury Grands! Croissants hit the freezer aisle in two flavors — classic butter and chocolate — and they bake straight from frozen with no proofing required.
The promise is serious pastry math: 48 flaky layers, real butter and a golden-brown crust after less than 30 minutes in a 400°F oven. Delish's Gabby Romero picked up bags and put the frozen pastries to the test, and her batches were ready at the early end of the 23-to-27-minute range.
Before they hit the oven, the raw croissants are petite — roughly the size of a crescent roll right out of the tube — with visible streaks of yellow butter swirled through the dough. Baking is simple: place them on a parchment-lined sheet and let the heat do the work. What came out looked nothing like the canned dough most of us know, puffing up into a deep brown, flaky pastry. "While I didn't stop to count all 48 layers, there's no denying that these croissants are flaky," Romero wrote.
Croissant vs. crescent roll
The texture gap is the real story. OG Crescent Rolls "taste much more like a dinner roll" with a bready chew, she said, while the new croissants "taste like pure butter (not just butter flavor)" with an airier, flakier structure.
The chocolate version impressed too. Senior Editor Samantha MacAvoy liked that the chocolate was "evenly dispersed throughout the croissant, rather than concentrated in one spot like it can be in a pain au chocolat."
The one quibble: Romero's test bags held six croissants each, but the versions rolling out to retail come with eight, and the bag isn't resealable if you want to save a few for later. Still, the whole team was "shocked these came from Pillsbury instead of a bakery."
Pillsbury Grands! Croissants are now available at grocery stores nationwide. For warm, buttery croissants without a bakery run, Romero's verdict is blunt: "buying these is a no-brainer."
