A study on Lady Margarine

These guidelines also apply to our new Angel ZERO product

[Grazie, Charlie Trotter]

Can changing only the margarine used for lamination completely transform a gluten-free croissant? I made a simple comparison to find out.

One of the biggest challenges in making vegan, gluten-free croissants is choosing the right margarine for lamination. The ideal product should be easy to work with, perform excellently during proofing and baking, offer good value for money, be highly palatable, and have an ingredient profile that aligns with current market needs and consumer expectations.

This comparison shows that professional puff pastry margarine is not automatically the best choice, just as supermarket margarine is not necessarily a poor-quality product. The differences are largely related to characteristics such as plasticity and melting profile, which strongly affect both lamination and the final product.

For this test, everything remained exactly the same: recipe, ingredients, method, proofing, and baking conditions. The only variable was the margarine.

Many pastry chefs tend to think that a disappointing result is due to the technique or the recipe. Sometimes, though, the real difference simply comes down to choosing the right margarine.

Test recipe

Dry ingredients

200g potato starch
60g tapioca starch
40g rice flour
40g sugar
30g ANGEL MIX 3.0
25g fresh baker's yeast
4g salt

Liquid ingredients

180g very cold water
10g vegetable oil

For lamination

150g of margarine

Method

Three single folds, with a final thickness of 8mm.
Cut 8 croissants from the 8mm-thick dough.
Proof covered for 60-70 minutes at 40°C.
Bake in a convection oven for 23 minutes at 180°C.

Final thoughts

Margarine A is a supermarket product. It produced a light, flaky croissant with excellent rise and a clean, non-greasy finish. Purely in visual terms, it delivered the best overall result of the three margarines tested.

Also Margarine B is a supermarket product. Unlike Margarine A, however, it could not withstand the laboratory's high ambient temperature (30°C), resulting in a very disappointing final product.

Margarine C is a professional laminating margarine, specifically formulated for puff pastry and croissants. It proved to be the best for workability, plasticity and ease of use, while still producing a high-quality result. However, despite being more challenging to work with, Margarine A ultimately produced the best croissant.

This is not intended as a scientific study, but as a practical comparison conducted under identical conditions.

Butter naturally has its own unique characteristics. However, this comparison is not about comparing butter and margarine; it aims to show how different margarines can behave very differently when used under the same conditions.

The title is a tribute to Charlie Trotter and his "A Study in Lady Apples", featured in the book Charlie Trotter's Desserts, in which a single ingredient was used to achieve surprisingly different results.