The best croissants in Rome. Do you prefer an Italian cornetto or a French croissant? Made with butter or margarine? Filled with Italian crema or chocolate? Read on for our favourite cafes and bakeries in Rome serving the tastiest croissants.

The best croissants in Rome

 

PIAZZA CAVOUR

Le Carrè Français

Teleporting yourself to the city of love is actually pretty easy: Le Carrè Français is a bistrot, patisserie, boulangerie, boucherie, fromagerie, epicerie and wineshop – you’d think you might need a passport to go there! We recommended heading straight for the croissants which are prepared in the patisserie by Stefania Recchia, who revealed her secret recipe to us… She follows the recipe of master pastry chef Baptiste Foronda. The first stage is the ‘detrempe’, when the dough is made and left to rest in the fridge over night, then there’s the ‘beurrage’, when the butter is rolled into sheets, and then there’s the ‘tourage’, when the dough and butter are folded together. After each of these stages the pastry gradually begins to resemble a croissant, and  it is then kept in the fridge for 12 hours and put in a leavening room until it has completely risen. The croissants are then painted with a mixture of egg and cream and popped in the oven. You can choose from a Croissant Nature (a traditional croissant costing 1.30 euros), a Croissant aux amandes filled with almond cream (1.40), a Pain au chocolat with Valrhona chocolate (1.40), Chausson aux pommes (an apple turnover, 1.90) or even a Pain aux raisins (1.50).

Le Carrè Français, via Vittoria Colonna 30, Rome. Tel.320 642 2558. Facebook

QUARTIERE TRIESTE (NORTH-EAST ROME)

Santi Sebastiano e Valentino

Santi Sebastiano e Valentino is a fantastic bakery. In the patisserie you’ll find the pastry chef Valerio Coltellacci with his new young assistant Fatima Raoui, and the latest arrivial, fresh from studying, Arturo Maria Giordano. For the leavening they don’t use any stabilisers or additives, simply organic flour mixed with different grains that come from Molino Sobrino, a small flour mill in the Langhe region in Piedmont. Other than the natural yeast, in the final stage of preparing the croissants, brewer’s yeast is added to the dough. Using both types of yeast has its advantages, the natural yeast allows the pastry to stay fresh for longer and keeps it soft and fluffy, while the brewer’s yeast gives the pastry strength and speeds up the final phase of rising and the cooking process. The bakery use the best ingredients: Corman butter, organic eggs from farm shop Cupidi and brown organic sugar. So, what do they taste like? You can choose between a traditional Italian cornetto made fresh to order, filled with jam, crema or hazelnut cream with olive oil and cocoa, or even a wholewheat French croissant made with honey and toasted sunflower seeds in the dough.

Santi Sebastiano e Valentino – Via Tirso 107/109 – Tel. 0687568048. Facebook

PRATI (NEAR THE VATICAN)

Brown & Co

Brown & Co., run by Carlo Cialoni, is a patisserie and cafe hidden off the busy Cola di Rienzo. The family’s croissant recipes have been handed down for over half a century from their ancestor Signor Saponara, a famous pastry chef. The puff pastry here is crisp on the outside and soft in the middle, and the outer layer is painted with egg yolk or glazed with sugar. They are so delicious that it’s difficult to resist ordering two, and, judging from the huge morning turnout, it seems they are very well known in the area. If you’re not a morning person, don’t fret, they make their pastries all day and you can choose from classic cornetti (1 euro) or cornetti filled with crema, jam or chocolate (1.20). There are also wholewheat varieties, Venetian whirls, danish pastries with raisins or chocolate, twists with crema or lemon, orange turnovers, and chocolate and pine nut whirls. You can enjoy one for a quick lunch at the bar or sit down inside.

Brown & CO, Via Tacito, 20, Rome. Tel. 0632306838, open every day from 6am to 10pm. Facebook

CENTRAL

Coromandel

If you’re on the hunt for a deliciously flavoursome and buttery croissant, Coromandel is your place. Small, secluded, and without the proper Italian-style bar, this cafe is decorated in the 1950s style. Both a cafe and bistro (located in via Monte Giordano, in the busiest part of the capital), here you can enjoy many types of breakfast. Coromandel’s croissants are the result of many years of experimenting to find the perfect recipe. They are all made by hand with butter from Normandy, and are half way between a French croissant and a classic Italian cornetto. To make them requires two days of leavening and then one day for folding the butter and dough together. The result is a croissant that is crispy, buttery (perhaps a little too much) and full of flavour (3 euros). Don’t miss out on the more international breakfast available, with eggs or pancakes on the menu, in true English breakfast style.

Coromandel Rome, Via Monte Giordano 60/61. Open from Tuesday to Saturday from 8.30am to 3pm, Sunday from 8.30am to 6pm. Tel. 0668802461. Website and Facebook

CENTRAL

Roscioli Caffè

Here you can taste the pastries made in the artisan Roscioli bakery, which Romans believe has revived the traditional pastarella romana (Roman pastry) scene. You can try one of the mini fruit pastries, pain au chocolat, sweet buns and croissants (there’s a choice between Italian and French versions). The raw dough is left to leaven for hours in water so that it rises as much as possible, which brings out the croissants full flavour, and then vanilla, honey, orange rind, butter and lemon can be added. The croissants cost 1.20 euros (1 euro for a mini one), while the sweet buns (maritozzi) cost from 1 euro to 2.20. At Roscioli the coffee is also made in a particular way with a manual coffee machine. It’s constantly adjusted so that with different pressures and temperatures, no one cup of coffee will be the same.

Roscioli Caffè Roma, via Benedetto Cairoli 16. Open every day from 7am to 11pm.  Tel. 0689165330. Website and Facebook

TRASTEVERE

Le Levain

This small French bakery opened its doors in 2014 in the heart of Trastevere. Here the young pastry chef from Puglia, Giuseppe Solfrizzi, trained by Alain Ducasse, succeeds in tickling everyone’s palate with his tasty, buttery baked goods. To make these delicious pastries, he pays great attention to his choice of ingredients: organic flour from the Quaglia flour mill, natural yeast, Pamplie butter and Callebaut chocolate. The chef told us about using an initial dough called ‘polis’, and then using the French-style folding technique, with only two simple twists. The croissants are crunchy on the outside but soft in the middle. You can order a sweet or salty variety (1,20) and they are made to order. Interestingly you can also order a loaf of brioche , an enormous croissant to share between friends (8 euros).

Le Levain, Via Luigi Santini, 22-23, Rome. Tel. 06 6456 2880. Website and Facebook

MONTEVERDE

Cristalli di Zucchero

Marco Rinella, King of Panettone, continues his family’s passion for baking that has been going for three generations. You can find his pastries in a number of cafes, patisseries and restaurants in Rome, but we went to try them in his long-standing cafe in Via di Val Tellina. Outside there’s a comfortable terrace while inside you’ll find a very classical Italian cafe with its marble surfaces and many mirrors. On arrival your eyes will be immediately drawn to the bar that’s laden with many different types of mini and massive pastries. There are some made of puff pastry, others made of short crust pastry (2.30 euro), and it’s a huge selection – there’s la Veneziana sprinkled with sugar, la Kranzella (a raisin twist), la Romanella (a ricotta and chocolate filled cornetto), la Parigina (a puff pastry pizza, often filled with ham), il Ventaglio (a sweet pastry whirl), the famous turnover filled with either Italian crema, sour cherry or chocolate, the raisin and pine nut Radetzky, the vanilla cream twist or the selection of Danish pastries. The traditional cornetti cost 1 euro and can be filled with chocolate or Italian crema, or there are wholeweat varieties made with honey that can be made to order. They are perfectly soft, fluffy and buttery and you’ll definitely want to go back for seconds…

Cristalli di Zucchero, Via di Val Tellina, 114. Tel 06 5823 0323, Website and Facebook.

Traduzione a cura di Corinna Parker