From bread to pastries and even perfectly chewy cookies, baking can be difficult, but there’s one baked good that scares even the most seasoned home baker: the croissant. Croissants can be daunting, but in reality, making homemade croissants comes down to practice, patience, and the right ingredients.

A great croissant is made with only a handful of ingredients so it's important that they're all of the highest quality, but perhaps most important is a high-quality, unsalted, European butter. European butter tends to have less water and more fat than American butter, giving your croissants that authentic French texture.

Aside from giving croissants their flavor, butter leaves your croissant with an airy inside and crispy exterior. The water content in butter helps accomplish this because it turns to steam while baking, creating those airy layers, but if your butter has too much water content, you’ll end up with a bread-like texture.