Why your dough tore during the second fold

Lamination works only while the butter and the dough stretch at the same rate. The dough is an elastic gluten net that yields slowly and springs back. The butter is a fat crystal network that yields at a temperature, not at a force. When the two rates diverge, the weaker material fails first.

Straight out of a 36°F (2°C) fridge, a butter block is close to glass. The détrempe around it is still pliable, because water and gluten stay workable well below butter's set point. Roll that combination and the dough extends while the block fractures. The broken corners then press through the surface as grey patches.

The reverse fault looks similar and is not. A block warmer than 64°F (18°C) inside a cold dough spreads sideways. It thins at the edges and breaks out there. Check which end of the range you were on before you correct it.

Aim for both the détrempe and the block near 58°F (14°C), and within 5°F of each other. Use a probe, on the block and pushed into the corner of the dough. Feel is not a reading, and the difference between 52°F (11°C) and 58°F (14°C) is not something hands report reliably.

If your fridge runs at 36°F (2°C) or colder, give the wrapped dough 8 minutes on the bench first. Beat the block on the counter until it bends without cracking at the fold. That bend is the whole test. A block that cracks is not ready.

Second folds tear more often than first folds for a simple reason. By then the dough has been rolled once and rested once, and the butter has been thinned. A thinner film has less room to absorb a mismatch. The same 8°F gap that survived the lock-in fails at fold 2.

Roll in one direction, in 8 to 10 short passes per fold, and turn the dough 180° halfway through. Short passes let the gluten and the butter move together. One long, hard pass stretches the dough millimetres before the butter yields. The butter then tears at the seam.

Keep the edges square as you go. A rounded end has thinner butter under it, so the corners are where breakthrough starts. Square the sides with the edge of the pin every second pass, and pinch the seams shut at the lock-in.

If the dough resists and springs back hard, stop and rest it 10 minutes in the fridge. Forcing an elastic dough is the single most common cause of a tear at the second fold. The gluten is telling you it has not relaxed yet.

Small tears are recoverable. Dust the exposed butter with flour and press the dough closed over it. Then chill the whole slab for 30 minutes. Then continue with the remaining folds and expect one slightly streaky patch in the finished tray.

Large tears with butter smeared across the surface are not worth rescuing as croissants. Fold the slab, chill it, sheet it to 4 mm and bake it flat with sugar as palmiers. That saves the butter and the weekend, and the next Run starts clean.

Either way, write down the two temperatures you actually measured and your fridge reading. A tear is one of the easiest faults to make disappear, because it depends on numbers you can control exactly. Nothing here depends on feel or on years at a bench.