What makes a cinnamon roll laminated?+
Lamination is the croissant technique: a block of butter is folded into the dough and rolled out again and again, so the finished pastry is built from dozens of alternating sheets of dough and butter. In the oven the water in the butter turns to steam and forces those sheets apart. Applied to a cinnamon roll it means the spiral flakes rather than pulling apart in soft strands, the outside caramelizes into a crisp shell, and butter does most of the work that sugar does in a classic roll. It is also the slowest style to make, which is why so many of the bakeries here bake in short runs: Machine Shop Boulangerie opens Wednesday to Sunday, Breadboard Bakery in Arlington bakes Wednesday, Friday and Sunday mornings only, and L'Appartement 4F runs its laminated roll on weekends.
How is a laminated roll different from a classic or a Scandinavian one?+
Three doughs, three results. A classic American roll uses a soft enriched dough with the butter mixed in, so it bakes up pillowy, pulls apart in strands, and carries cream cheese frosting. A Scandinavian kanelbulle or kanelsnegl uses a similar enriched dough but leans on cardamom, less sugar, and pearl sugar instead of frosting. A laminated roll keeps the butter in sheets rather than mixing it in, so it behaves like a croissant: flaky, crisp at the edges, and finished with a thin glaze or nothing at all. Rollers Bakehouse in Manly, Sydney skips icing entirely on the principle that the butter should lead. The one place the styles genuinely overlap is Denmark, where the traditional kanelsnegl is often laminated to begin with: Andersen Bakery in Islands Brygge and Lagkagehuset both build theirs that way.
Which is the best laminated cinnamon roll?+
By our ranking, Machine Shop Boulangerie in South Philadelphia. James Beard nominated chef Emily Riddell bakes an orange-cardamom morning bun with sticky caramelized layers and a shatteringly flaky exterior, and the New York Times named the bakery to its 22 Best Bakeries in America in 2024. It opens Wednesday to Sunday only. Behind it: Yardsale Cafe in South Slope, Brooklyn, which holds a 4.9 Google rating across more than 340 reviews; Petitgrain Boulangerie in Santa Monica, where the glaze shatters like a candy shell; and two Boston-area bakeries, Clear Flour Bread in Brookline and Breadboard Bakery in Arlington. Sea Wolf Bakers in Fremont, Seattle, a 2019 James Beard semifinalist for Outstanding Baker, uses the same laminated dough as its croissants and is the consensus pick in that city.
Is a morning bun the same thing as a laminated cinnamon roll?+
Close enough that the difference is mostly naming. A morning bun is croissant dough rolled with cinnamon sugar, usually baked in a muffin tin so the edges caramelize against the sides, and very often scented with orange. That orange note is the tell across this whole style: Machine Shop's bun is orange-cardamom, Floriole in Lincoln Park, Chicago pinwheels its dough with cinnamon brown sugar and orange zest, and Tartine Bakery in San Francisco's Mission, the version visitors queue for before opening, uses a cinnamon-orange sugar coating. Where the two part ways is shape. A morning bun's tin makes it tall and compact; a laminated cinnamon roll is more often baked as a flat open spiral. If a menu says morning bun, expect lamination.
