Feast Your Eyes on the Making of the Cheesy, Meat-Stuffed Pizza Cruffin

At Bisous Bisous Patisserie, the pastry case is generally filled with a variety of decadent sweet treats. But if you’re looking to splurge in a much more savory way, behold the pizza cruffin — an off-menu treat that’s almost as exclusive as it is delicious.

The brainchild of pastry chef Andrea Meyer, the pizza cruffin is an interpretation of a wildly popular pastry with a bizarre backstory. The word “cruffin” appears as a trademark as early as 1993, but the hybrid pastry didn’t find massive popularity in the United States until 20 years later, when the Cruffin was introduced by baker Aaron Caddell at San Francisco’s Mr. Holmes Bakeshop.

In Dallas, the pizza cruffin began as an experiment. “We did them last year, just as a fun collaboration with Brian Luscher,” says Meyer. “We wanted to do something with his product anyway. [The cruffin] was so popular that we couldn’t keep them in stock. People have been asking about it all year. They want it to be on our regular menu.”

Outside of the edible appeal of cruffins, they also help Meyer reduce a problem that plagues all restaurant owners: Food waste. “Every time you make a croissant, everything needs to be square all the time,” she says. “You’re constantly trimming things to make it square, so the dough that we use for the cruffin is all of those trim pieces I wasn’t gonna throw away. There’s just so much of it that we can still do something with it. It’s still buttery and delicious.”

Throughout the year, Meyer offers cruffins in various flavors, like raspberry cream cheese and s’mores. But for the month of June, the pizza cruffin has returned. At $4.25 each, they’re a solid (and fancy!) way to satisfy a pizza craving without breaking the bank or resorting to delivery.

Without further ado, feast your eyes on the step-by-step process of making of Bisous Bisous Patisserie’s pizza cruffin, as captured by Eater photographer Kathy Tran.

A large sheet of croissant dough, salvaged from other pastries, is rolled out onto a table. Housemade pizza sauce is evenly ladled over the top.

Next, a hefty sprinkle of mozzarella is layered on top, followed by plenty of Luscher’s sausage and pepperoni.

Then, a Bisous Bisous baker known as “the cruffinator” expertly rolls the dough around the filling and slices the dough into perfectly even portions.

The finished cruffins proof for about an hour before taking a trip to the oven.

Finally, the cruffins head into Bisous Bisous’ convection oven until the exterior is nicely browned and the cheese is melted throughout.

The resulting pastry is light and buttery, yet packed with pizza flavor.

Try not to drool on your keyboard.