SF’s biggest croissant costs $22, contains almost a pound of butter — and is incredible

Le Marais owner Patrick Ascaso loves croissants — like, really, really loves them. So much so, in fact, that his bakery sells a giant, $22 croissant that must be ordered three business days in advance. By weight, one is equivalent to 10 normal-sized croissants. 

The highly Instagrammable pastry wasn’t something Ascaso ever intended to sell. He wanted to display a few on the counter of the bakery’s new Larkspur outpost, a way to catch customers’ eyes and draw attention to the regular au beurre croissants.

“The size represents my love of it,” Ascaso, 62, says. “I wasn’t thinking people would actually buy them.”

Croissants always contain large quantities of butter, often 30% or more by weight. But the ones from Le Marais come in even higher: 40%. That means each giant croissant contains a staggering 400 grams of butter — nearly nine-tenths of a pound. Le Marais’ bakers, Ascaso says, use a mix of French and American butters, though he would not divulge the specifics of the fatty alchemy. He thinks his croissants strike the right balance between fat and flour, despite being on the more buttery end of the spectrum. 

“Some have an even higher butter content by percentage,” he says. “But I don’t digest them well.” 

Aside from a longer proofing time — three to four hours, as opposed to two and a half for ordinary croissants — it’s not difficult to bake the big ones, he says. The croissant is the only oversize item on Le Marais’ menu, which Ascaso, a traditionalist who grew up in a suburb of Paris, doesn’t want to lard up with gimmicks and novelties.

“Our bakery is not trying to do the crazy stuff,” he says. “We’re very classy. The purpose wasn’t to try to be famous.” 

The Standard visited Le Marais’ Castro location — one of two in the city and four throughout the Bay Area — to see how the mammoth pastries stand up. What we found was an almost architectural pastry, with laminated crust giving way to a cavernous and intensely buttery interior.

It felt surreal to hold, as if breakfast had been enlarged by a laser in a sci-fi flick. Finishing one should not be attempted solo. In the end, the task required three hungry adults pulling the pastry apart over two sittings. But mon dieu! It is a supremely delicious, 10-out-of-10, no-notes treat.

Le Marais sells its regular croissants for $4.50 each or $28 for a dozen. So strictly speaking, the giant one represents a good value. The bakery sells between eight and 12 of them per week, mostly on weekends. 

“I have friends who use it for sandwiches the next day. Or they serve it at the table. It’s nice to pick at and shred,” Ascaso says. What does he put on his? Nothing, it turns out: “I’m a mature old person who just loves it the way it should be eaten.”