from
Behind the French Menu
by
Bryan G. Newman
Croissant
Croissant by posterize by
freedigitalphotos.net
A real French croissant has feathery, crisp, buttery, flaky pastry that will dissolve on your tongue; the imitations are either hard or spongy and may bounce on the floor if dropped. A croissant is made from ultra-thin layers of a pâte levée feuilletée, a yeast-based puff pastry with butter separating each of the thin leaves of the pastry. When the croissant is baked some of the water in the butter turns to steam and creates the airy pastry. A well-made croissant will have close to 40% of its weight from butter. The croissant took its name from its original shape, a crescent; today you may have a croissant in many forms.
Buying a croissant in France.
For the croissant's history see further down this post.
Among all the mouth-watering croissants in French bakery windows the original croissant au beurre, the plain butter croissant still leads with a 40% market share. The pain au chocolat, the chocolate stuffed croissant is second in the popularity stakes, and as I was reminded, the croissant aux amandes, the almond croissant, comes a close third. The almond croissant is stuffed with almond paste and has a light covering of almond shavings on top.
Croissants at breakfast in France.
During the week, croissants are not, usually, on the breakfast table in French homes; it is at the weekend that the croissant rules the French breakfast table. During the week a baguette, or another French bread, with butter and jam will suffice. (For more about breakfast in France click here). Nevertheless, visitors, in most hotels, will be offered croissants along with a number of French breads at breakfast. French cafes offer two or three different croissants at breakfast time. Later in the day cafes will have a much wider choice.
www.flickr.com/photos/einalem/4962477097
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Croissants at lunchtime.
Large, stuffed croissants will be on lunchtime menus in, cafés and snack bars where they compete with sandwiches. Croissants may be stuffed with ham and cheese or more adventurous fillings, and a restaurant lunch menu may offer a stuffed croissant accompanied by French fries, chips, and a small green salad.
Croissant for lunch.
www.flickr.com/photos/ralphandjenny/4670091146/
Croissants in the afternoon
Croissants compete with other pastries for afternoon customers, and then croissants will appear in varieties rarely seen outside of France.
Croissant at tea-time
www.flickr.com/photos/soullenses/6902698613/
The croissants offered may include:
Croissant à la Confiture de Lait – Croissants with dulce de leche.
Croissant au Beurre – The original and still most popular butter
croissant.
Croissant au Jambon - A croissant stuffed with ham. Usually, jambon blanc also called Jambon de Paris; that is a cooked ham, not cured ham.
Why the croissants of France taste better.
Outside of those cafés and supermarkets that serve mass-produced croissants, the croissants served in France always taste far better than those I have tried elsewhere. The perfect croissants’ light and unique texture are made by rolling the pastry together with over 40% butter, by weight again and again; that is what makes a great croissant; it costs more but that is what the market insists upon. The best patisseries use a special AOC butter, the Beurre Sec de Feuilletage AOC Poitou-Charente. This butter is a Beurre Pâtissier especially made in thin leaves for chef pâtissiers, pastry cooks. It contains 99.8% butterfat and the smallest package weighs 1 kilo (2.2 lbs). When in France pay a little more and buy the real thing, a Croissant au Beurre, a butter croissant. You may watch your cholesterol by limiting the number of croissants that you eat; there are 180 calories in an average croissant.
The legends behind the croissant’s creation.
There are many stories about the croissant and its creation; some of these stories began over one thousand years ago, while other stories, as may be expected, include Marie-Antoinette. One of the favorite stories connects the croissant to the European wars with the Ottoman Turks; the Turkish flag includes a crescent, a croissant in French.
La Lune Croissante - The Crescent Moon.
www.flickr.com/photos/edrost88/40904906724/
The real history of the French croissant.
The creator of the French croissant was neither French nor Turkish; he was an Austrian businessman, August Zang (1807 – 1888). From a previous visit to Paris, Zang knew of the French love and admiration for Austrian cakes and pastries and saw an excellent business opportunity in selling the French genuine Austrian pastries. Zang returned to Paris, in the late 1830’s, complete with the best Austrian pastry chefs he could entice away from Vienna, and opened a Viennese bakery in Paris at 93 Rue de Richelieu. Rather obviously, the bakery was named the Boulangerie Viennoise.
The Boulangerie Viennoise, as it was in 1909.
Then it was owned by Philibert Jacquet.
Photograph Wikipedia Creative Commons Attribution
In the 1800’s the Viennese, not the French, were considered the leaders in all types of baking and pastry making, and French chefs traveled to Vienna to study with the masters. Even Antonin Carême, France’s foremost chef of the 19th century, with pastry his first love, paid his dues by visiting the leading pastry chefs of Vienna. Zang's bakery sold all types of Viennese and Austrian pastries including a traditional, tasty, crescent-shaped, Austrian pastry called a kipferl, a crescent in German.
Zang's Boulangerie Viennoise was a success and within a year had Parisians standing in line. With success comes imitation and very quickly French boulangeries and patisseries began making copies of Zang’s Austrian pastries. Those pastries included the kipferl but now made with under the name croissant, a crescent in French and the rest is history.
How the Croissant became French.
The French bakers, as may be expected tweaked, some of the original recipes, including that of the kipferl by adding more butter. Now the croissant au beurre, the butter croissant, was on its way and has never looked back. After ten years with his very successful Boulangerie Viennoise Zang was looking for new heights to conquer. In 1847, Austria ended newspaper censorship, and Zang saw another business opportunity as a newspaper publisher. Zang sold his Boulangerie Viennoise to a French pâtissier and returned home to Austria where he made millions as the founder of the Die Presse newspaper which is still in print today. Still today there is no plaque at 93 Rue de Richelieu?
The Italians have imported the French croissant.
www.flickr.com/photos/andreafis/239082281/
A few years further on Zang would sell his newspaper and again look for new opportunities; he went on to become a banker and industrialist. When Zhang passed on, he was buried in the Zentralfriedhof cemetery in Vienna. His ornate tomb is today a place of pilgrimage for those who honor the man who made a gift of the croissant to France.
The tomb of August Zang in Vienna.
Photograph courtesy of find a grave added by §ĸỵнï
Without any argument, except maybe from the Viennese, today the croissant is French. Many French boulangeries, patisseries, cake shops, still honor the Viennese pastry chefs by noting they offer Viennoiseries. Viennoiseries are small pastries, looking somewhat similar to the Danishes in the USA, but made with puff pastry.
Where to buy croissants and Viennoiseries
www.flickr.com/photos/miwok/17079195530/
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Behind the French Menu
by
Bryan G. Newman
Copyright 2010, 2011, 2014, 2017, 2019
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