A croissant is a buttery, flaky, viennoiserie pastry of Austrian origin, but mostly associated with France. Croissants are named for their historical crescent shape and, like other viennoiseries, are made of a layered yeast-leavened dough. The dough is layered with butter, rolled and folded several times in succession, then rolled into a thin sheet, in a technique called laminating. The process results in a layered, flaky texture, similar to a puff pastry.
Crescent-shaped breads have been made
since the Renaissance, and crescent-shaped cakes possibly since antiquity. Croissants have long been a staple of Austrian,
Italian, and French bakeries and pâtisseries. The modern croissant was developed in the
early 20th century. In the late 1970s, the development of factory-made, frozen,
pre-formed but unbaked dough made them into a fast food that can be freshly
baked by unskilled labor. The croissant bakery, notably the La
Croissanterie chain, was a French response to American-style fast
food, and as of 2008, 30–40% of the croissants sold in French bakeries and
patisseries were baked from frozen dough.
Croissants are a common part of a continental
breakfast in many European countries.
The kipferl, the origin of croissant,
can be dated back to at least the 13th century in Austria, and came in various
shapes. The kipferl can be made plain or
with nuts or other fillings (some consider the rugelach a form of kipferl).
The birth of the croissant itself—that
is, its adaptation from the plainer form of kipferl, before the invention of viennoiseries
---can be dated to at least 1839 (some say 1838) when an Austrian artillery
officer, August Zang, founded a Viennese bakery ("Boulangerie
Viennoise") at 92, rue de Richelieu in Paris. This bakery, which served Viennese
specialties including the kipferl and the Vienna loaf, quickly became popular
and inspired French imitators (and the concept, if not the term, of viennoiserie,
a 20th-century term for supposedly Vienna-style pastries). The French version
of the kipferl was named for its crescent (croissant) shape and has
become a universally identifiable shape across the world.
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 non-laminated croissants can be found in the 19th century and
at least one reference to croissants as an established French bread appeared as
early as 1850.
Zang himself returned to Austria in 1848
to become a press magnate, but the bakery remained popular for some time
afterwards, and was mentioned in several works of the time: "This same M.
Zank [sic]...founded around 1830 [sic], in Paris, the famous Boulangerie
viennoise". Several sources praise
this bakery's products: "Paris is of exquisite delicacy; and, in
particular, the succulent products of the Boulangerie Viennoise"; "which
seemed to us as fine as if it came from the Viennese bakery on the rue de
Richelieu".
By 1869, the croissant was well
established enough to be mentioned as a breakfast staple, 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".
The puff pastry technique which now
characterizes the croissant was already mentioned in the late 17th century,
when La Varenne's Le Cuisinier François 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). It does not appear to
be mentioned in relation to the croissant until the 20th century.
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