The Best Grocery Store Croissant Easily Rivals Costco

While retailers like Walmart and Costco are heavyweights in the big box store arena, smaller supermarkets are making a big entrance with their competitive offerings. Costco is often praised for its popular buttery croissants, which we ranked as one of the top contending breads from Costco's bakery. The crescent-shaped rolls are moist, relatively flaky, and, most importantly, buttery—the hallmarks of a true and authentic croissant. However, the bigwig's croissants were given a run for their money by Fresh Thyme Market's perfect croissant. Better known for its organic food, Fresh Thyme Market is quickly proving itself to be multifaceted. Whether its efforts to bake the best crescent-shaped roll were deliberate or not, we placed the humble supermarket's product at number 1 out of 10 popular chain grocery store croissants.

Although seemingly smaller, Fresh Thyme Market's perfect croissant is actually similar to Costco's buttery one, except it has a glossy finish that makes it more appealing. The smaller-chain grocery store's croissant also reigns superior with finer layers of pastry on both the exterior and interior — something Costco's does not execute as brilliantly. This results in Fresh Thyme Market's pastry having a flaky crust that may leave a mess of paper-thin scales on your plate, but it's a mess well worth every bite nonetheless. With Costco's croissant, however, you get just a bit of flakiness after warming it up, but that's inevitable with any standard croissant.

A key feature that sets Fresh Thyme Market's croissant apart is its airy texture. Fresh Thyme Market's croissant boasts a soft, lighter interior with crispy layers compared to Costco's doughy, heavier version of the French pastry delight, which may result from rushing the dough's resting time. Without that irresistible airy center and crispy crust, it loses the appeal of a true patisserie production. For our Tasting Table tester, Megan Hageman, this difference was enough to disarm Costco's croissant and bring Fresh Thyme Market's to victory.

Its lighter, golden brown color also gives Fresh Thyme Market's roll an edge since this is the color of a perfectly baked croissant. Contrarily, Costco's can tend to be a shade darker, and for some online reviewers, plain brown. This wouldn't be a problem if the deeper shade did not sometimes entail a burnt taste, which others have complained about. Obviously, dark and burnt croissants are clear features of overcooking (which can also result in a dryer bite), thus it became painfully obvious which pastry offering ought to be number 1 on our list. All in all, the smaller Fresh Thyme Market took big strides by offering the literal perfect croissant, and their efforts measured up and exceeded our expectations.