Croissant

A croissant

A ham and cheese croissant

A croissant (French pronunciation: [kʁwasɑ̃]  ( listen), anglicised variously as /krəˈsɑːnt/, /kwɑːˈsɑːn/, etc.) is a buttery flaky bread or pastry, named for its distinctive crescent shape. It is also sometimes called a crescent^[1] or crescent roll.^[2] Croissants are made of a leavened variant of puff pastry. The yeast dough is layered with butter, rolled and folded several times in succession, then rolled into a sheet, a technique called laminating.

Crescent-shaped breads have been made since the Middle Ages, and crescent-shaped cakes (imitating the often-worshiped Moon) possibly since classical times.^[3]

Croissants have long been a staple of French bakeries and patisseries. In the late 1970s, the development of factory-made, frozen, pre-formed but unbaked dough made them into a fast food which can be freshly baked by unskilled labor. Indeed, the croissanterie was explicitly a French response to American-style fast food,^[4] and today 30-40% of the croissants sold in French bakeries and patisseries are frozen.^[5]

This innovation, along with the croissant's versatility and distinctive shape, has made it the best-known type of French pastry in much of the world.

Origin

A croissant rising from unbaked dough

La Parisienne unbaked croissant

The kipferl - ancestor of the croissant - has been documented in Austria going back at least as far as the 13th century, in various shapes.^[6] The kipferl can be made plain or with nut or other fillings (some consider the rugelach a form of kipferl^[7]).

The original Boulangerie Viennoise in 1909 (when it was owned by Philibert Jacquet). The bakery proper is at left and its tea salon at right.

The "birth" of the croissant itself - that is, its adaptation from the plainer form of kipferl, before its subsequent evolution (to a puff pastry) - can be dated with some precision to at latest 1839 (some say 1838), when an Austrian artillery officer, August Zang, founded a Viennese Bakery ("Boulangerie Viennoise") at 92, rue de Richelieu in Paris.^[8] This bakery, which served Viennese specialties including the kipfel and the Vienna loaf, quickly became popular and inspired French imitators (and the concept, if not the term, viennoiserie, a 20th century term for supposedly Vienna-style pastries). The French version of the kipferl was named for its crescent (croissant) shape.

A Kipferl: precursor to the Croissant

Alan Davidson, editor of the Oxford Companion to Food, found no printed recipe for the present-day croissant in any French recipe book before the early 20th century; the earliest French reference to a croissant he found was among the "fantasy or luxury breads" in Payen's Des substances alimentaires, 1853. However, early recipes for the croissant (without butter, and so not puff pastry-based) can be found in the nineteenth century and at least one reference to croissants as an established French bread appeared as early as 1850 (in Académie d'agriculture de France, Mémoires (Paris: Bouchard-Huzard, 1850) First Part, p. 588).

August Zang himself returned to Austria in 1848 to become a press magnate, but the bakery remained popular for some time after, and was mentioned in several works of the time: "This same M. Zank [sic]...founded around 1830 [sic], in Paris, the famous Boulangerie viennoise" ^[9]. Several sources refer to the superiority of this bakery's products: "Paris is of exquisite delicacy; and, in particular, the succulent products of the Boulangerie Viennoise"^[10]; "which seemed to us as fine as if it came from the Viennese bakery on the rue de Richelieu"^[11].

By 1869, the croissant was well-established enough to be mentioned as a breakfast staple ^[12] and in 1872, Charles Dickens wrote (in his periodical "All the Year Round") of:

the workman's pain de ménage and the soldier's pain de munition, to the dainty croissant on the boudoir table ^[13]

The puff pastry used to make the modern croissant was already mentioned in the late 17th century, when La Varenne's "Le cuisinier français" gave a recipe for it in the 1680 - and possibly earlier - editions. It was typically used, not on its own, but for shells holding other ingredients (as in a vol-au-vent). But it does not appear to be mentioned in relation to the croissant until the twentieth century.

Origin stories

Fanciful stories of how the kipfel - and so, ultimately, the croissant - was created are culinary legends, at least one going back to the 19th century ^[14]. These include tales that it was invented in Europe to celebrate the defeat of a Muslim invasion at the decisive Battle of Tours by the Franks in 732, with the shape representing the Islamic crescent;^[15] that it was invented in Vienna, Austria in 1683 to celebrate the defeat of the Turks to Polish forces in the Turkish siege of the city, as a reference to the crescents on the Turkish flags, when bakers staying up all night heard the tunneling operation and gave the alarm; tales linking croissants with the kifli and the siege of Buda in 1686; and those detailing Marie Antoinette's hankering after a Polish specialty.

Several points argue against the connection to the Turkish invasion or to Marie-Antoinette: saving the city from the Turks would have been a major event, yet the incident seems to be only referenced by food writers (writing well after the event), and Marie-Antoinette - a closely watched monarch, with a great influence on fashion - could hardly have introduced a unique foodstuff without writers of the period having commented on it. Those who claim a connection never quote any such contemporary source; nor does an aristocratic writer, writing in 1799, mention the pastry in a long and extensive list of breakfast foods.^[16]

The fact that these stories have long been disproved does not prevent reputable companies from repeating them on their sites.^[17] Despite increasing scholarship in cultural history in general and in food history in particular, these myths are still found far more frequently than the documented versions.

Variants

Lye croissants in Southern Germany

La Parisienne Almond Croissant

Croissant pastry can also be wrapped around any praline, almond paste or chocolate before it is baked (in the last case, it becomes like pain au chocolat, which has a different, non-crescent, shape), or sliced to admit sweet or savoury fillings. In France and Spain, croissants are generally sold without filling and eaten without added butter, but sometimes with almond filling. In the United States, sweet fillings or toppings are common, and warm croissants may be filled with ham and cheese or feta cheese and spinach. In the Levant, croissants are sold plain or filled with chocolate, cheese, almonds, or zaatar. In Germany, croissants are sometimes filled with Nutella or persipan; in Southern Germany there also is a popular variety of a croissant glazed with lye ("Laugencroissant"). In Switzerland the croissant is typically called a Gipfeli which typically has a crisper crust and is less buttery than the French style croissant. In some Latin American countries, croissants are commonly served alongside coffee as a breakfast or merienda. These croissant are referred to as medialunas ("half moons") and are typically coated with a sweet glaze ("de manteca", made with butter). Another variant is a medialuna "de grasa" ("of lard"), which is not sweet.

Italian Cornetto

A cousin of the croissant is the Italian cornetto. Though most often the two words are considered to be synonyms, that's not completely true: croissants, in their French version tend to be crispy and contain a lot of butter, whereas an Italian cornetto is usually softer. Furthermore, the "cornetto vuoto" (italian: "empty cornetto") is commonly sided by variants with filling,which include "crema pasticcera", jam and chocolate cream. They come often covered with powder sugar.

Spread of the Croissant

Historically, the croissant was not commonplace in the UK. Although available in speciality places, it was only in the late 1980s that supermarkets started stocking them and then in the late 1990s with the growth of cafe culture did the croissant spread. They were introduced to Ethiopia by 1902, during the reign of Menelik II^[18]

Croissant are also seen in former French colonies such as Morocco.

See also

• August Zang
• Baguette
• Brioche

Notes

References

External links