The 4am Ritual: How Our Baker Makes Your Morning Croissant

Most cafes order their pastries from central bakeries. We do not. Every croissant, muffin, and cake at TNF Cafe is made in our kitchen, from scratch, starting at 4am every morning.

Meet Karthini

Karthini Subramaniam has been our head baker since we opened in 2019. She trained in Penang under a French-trained pastry chef before spending two years working in cafes across KL. When we described the kind of bakery experience we wanted for TNF Cafe, she was the obvious person to make it happen.

"The thing about croissants is that you cannot rush them," Karthini tells us. "The lamination process alone takes three days. If you skip any step or cut any corner, you end up with a brioche roll, not a croissant."

The Three-Day Croissant

On Day One, Karthini prepares the détrempe — the base dough — and lets it cold-ferment in our walk-in refrigerator overnight. The slow fermentation develops complex flavour compounds that you simply cannot get from a quick proof.

Day Two is lamination: repeatedly folding cold butter into the dough to create hundreds of paper-thin layers. Each fold and rest cycle takes about two hours. Done correctly, you should be able to see distinct, defined layers when you cut through a baked croissant.

Day Three is shaping, proofing, and baking. The croissants go into our deck oven at exactly 185°C for 22 minutes — Karthini checks them personally and pulls each tray by eye, not by timer.

The Result

The croissants come out of the oven at around 7:30am. They are on the counter by 8:30am, still warm. When you bite into one, you will hear the crunch before you taste the butter. That sound is the lamination working as intended.

We are at Sungai Buloh, open from 9am. Come early — the fresh-baked pastries sell out fast.