The Croissant: A Light and Airy History (2024)

The croissant is not French. There, now that I have your attention, find out how it became the quintessential French pastry. The history of croissants dates back to 1683 when the Ottoman Turks laid siege to Vienna, Austria. Bakers who were up early in the morning to prepare bread for the city’s inhabitants heard the sound of the Turks tunneling underground. (My kitchen is always filled with clingin’ and clangin’ pans, hopefully there are no tunnels under my house…). They alerted the army, and the Turks were defeated. In celebration, the bakers created a crescent-shaped pastry, which they called the Kipferl. Kipferl to my searching simply means “crescent” to represent crescent moon seen in the Turkish flag. But why did they become some sort of standard of pastry, what makes these little treasures so addicting, and what’s the future of these artisan kisses of air?

In the early 1800’s a baker August Zang is credited to the first appearance of the croissant in France. In 1915 a baker named Slyvain Claudius Goy developed the recipe and technique with the prized French laminated dough, the French created puff-pastry, cementing the croissant that we all know and love. In the early days, croissants were a luxury item that was only enjoyed by the wealthy. They were labor-intensive to make, requiring several rounds of rolling and folding butter into the dough to create the flaky layers. However, as the popularity of the pastry grew, more and more bakeries began making croissants, and they became more affordable. A pure supply and demand model.

In France, the traditional croissant is made with butter, while in other countries, it may be made with margarine or other types of fat. The dough is not the difficult part of the recipe. The difficult part is the lamination. For starters it is recommended to not exceed 20% of the total dough weight for the butter used in lamination. The temperature of the dough and butter should be very similar, there is a window of tolerance but it's not wide. The mechanic behind the magic of croissants is steam. When the dough and butter are laminated together, the butter is enveloped inside the dough. Inside the oven, the heat causes the moisture in the butter to steam, creating beautiful pockets of air. These pockets give the croissant its signature flaky texture and irresistible mouthfeel. It is important to note that the lamination process must be done correctly to achieve this effect, and the butter used should have a high butterfat content (around 80-85%) for the best taste and texture.

The future of croissants is certainly bright. Consumers’ have recently been requesting healthy indulgent items. This might look like alternative flours, sugars, or fats being used in croissants. The traditional croissant will not lose its market share, if anything I believe the market will simply get bigger. Croissant doughnuts, waffles, muffins, and more have already entered the bakery scene, you can expect to see more varieties using the traditional flaky dough. Despite its many variations, the croissant remains a symbol of French culture and cuisine. It has become a beloved pastry around the world, and its history is a testament to the ingenuity of bakers and the power of good food to bring people together.