LUCKY PE CH Breakfast par egg-cellence The best ways around the globe to start your day INSIDE The Dim Sum The better A flaky The Breakfast Revolution: doughnut: past: Club: Why this Chinese Bagels, and why The marvel of Meet Billy and Bob, breakfast will win they’re here to the modern the two best friends your tastebuds stay in your life croissant, and who bond over and heart forever and on the block how it came to breakfast be the nineteenth century. Still the tale points reason why the French started spec- to a truth about pastry at the time: it was ifying croissant au beurre, meaning ‘with still reserved for people in high soci- butter,’” as opposed to the croissant ety. The democratization of pastry and ordinaire, made with margarine. sweets would not come until many years Twentieth Century to Present after the French Revolution. Various recipes for a French pastry Baking ingredients, like eggs, butter, called a croissant appeared in the years cream, chocolate, and sugar, were still after Zang’s bakery opened, but the first expensive in the early 1800s, but rising one to refer to a croissant based on wealth in Vienna between 1815 and pâte feuilletée did not appear until the 1848 meant that pastry culture was beginning of the 1900s. A French baker accessible to an ever-growing segment named Sylvain Claudius Goy wrote a of the population. The same was true in recipe in 1915 that specifically mentions tion was limited to the wealthiest segment Paris, where the population doubled be- pâte feuilletée, calling to roll the dough of society. tween 1815 and 1861. While café culture and laminate it with butter just as one Seventeenth Century in Paris had been around for about a would for the puff pastry—though the In 1653, the first documented recipe for hundred years, pastry shops were just be- croissant dough would include yeast, pâte feuilletée (puff pastry), appeared in coming ubiquitous, feeding the appetites which a traditional puff pastry does not. François Pierre de la Varenne’s Le Pâtis- of the growing bourgeoisie. This technique remains at the core of the sier François, the first book to catalogue It was at one of these new pastry modern croissant. French pastry arts. After Varenne codified shops where the French croissant came The importance of quality ingredients it, this spiritual antecedent to croissant to be. In the late 1830s, journalist August and skilled labor for the croissant be- dough became essential to the French Zang opened Boulangerie Viennoise, an came apparent during the twentieth cen- pastry repertoire. upscale pastry shop in the heart of Paris tury. During World War I, sugar rationing A popular croissant creation myth specializing in treats from his native Vi- was common in France, and selling pas- dates back to this era. Legend has it that enna. He introduced the kipfel along with tries was temporarily banned as a result. during the 1683 siege of Vienna a group pain viennois (a Viennese-style sandwich After World War II, the rise of mass-pro- of bakers discovered Ottoman Turks tun- duced food meant that croissants were neling into the city. To celebrate their dis- more accessible than ever before. By covery, they created a crescent-shaped the 1970s, many French bakeries were pastry modeled after Turkish flag. The buying prefabricated, frozen croissants problem with the story: crescent-shaped or croissant dough—a trend that con- baked goods existed in Austria long be- tinues today. In the U.S., mass-produced fore, and a similar myth exists for the Turkish croissants and croissant dough also took siege of Budapest just three years later. off with the introduction of refrigerated Toward the end of the seventeenth cen- Pillsbury Crescents in 1965 and frozen tury, falling sugar prices allowed wealthy croissants by Sara Lee in 1981. non-royals in Paris to enjoy sweets that The democratization of croissants roissant crazy were once exclusive to the courts, similar cemented its place at the heart of French to what had happened in Austria in the breakfast, but its craft and quality remain All pastries have a past, and the beloved croissant is no exception. previous century. When Louis XIV moved under threat. In 2014, only 10 to 20 the government from Paris to Versailles, bread), both of which became widely percent of the estimated thirty-five thou- by Lily Starbuck Paris became a site of rebellion against popular in the city within ten years, and sand boulangeries in France made fresh the ancien régime, a large part of which he coined the term viennoiserie for the croissants (given the label fait maison, involved meeting to discuss new ideas family of French breakfast pastries. This meaning homemade). Frozen croissants A freshly baked, quality croissant is a croissant when you cut it in half and see century, referring to crescent-shaped over tea or coffee and pastries. kipfel was made with noticeably flakier save bakeries money on labor, the most marvel. It is part architecture and part “alveoli”—Payard adopts the word for the sweets, but it does not refer specifically Eighteenth to Nineteenth dough than traditional brioche-based expensive part of the baking process. versions, and people began to refer to it alchemy; a miracle rendered in butter, sacs in our lungs—in the middle. to the Viennese breakfast pastry until Century “We don’t think about it so much in flour, and sugar that is simultaneously But how did buttery little crescent the fifteenth century, according to Jim as the croissant because of its crescent The marriage between Austrian America, but labor is a staggering cost in crisp and pillow-tender, ethereally buttery moons with lung sacs in them make their Chevallier’s August Zang and the French shape—though references to croissants princess Marie Antoinette and French France,” says David Lebovitz, an Ameri- yet light enough to eat at the start of the way to our table? By following the history Croissant. (A dessert called gateaux en made with true, yeasted puff pastry king Louis XIV is often attributed to the can pastry chef-turned-cookbook writer day. of those ingredients and the people who croissants appeared at a Parisian ban- dough did not come until the 1900s. creation of the croissant in France. In based in Paris. “Even bakers who you The modern croissant is made up of put them together, the story of the crois- quet for Catherine de’ Medici in 1549; In the years leading up to the Fran- order to fully embrace her new country, wouldn’t think are selling frozen croissants water, milk, flour, yeast, sugar, and fat— sant tells the story of Europe as a whole. however, that word likely referred to co-Prussian War, butter became more ex- the new queen was forced to cut ties are. It makes sense: a croissant costs usually butter, sometimes margarine. The Rising and falling empires, wars, and crescent-shaped cakes and confections, pensive and scarce. In a sign of pastry’s with her family, even having to leave her about a euro, which is pretty cheap if crescent-shaped pastries are fashioned marriages all contributed to the croissant not the pastry we know today.) importance to the French diet, Napoleon beloved dogs back in Austria. In the you look at the cost of butter and labor. from laminated dough, usually with a as we know it today. In the sixteenth century, the royal III hosted a competition to create a but- court of Versailles, where it was custom for It’s not easy to make money off that.” ratio of three parts butter to ten parts court of Vienna appointed its first court ter replacement. The result was margarine, Fifteenth to Sixteenth Century the king and queen to eat in front of an flour. Pastry chef François Payard (a confectioner, an official recognition of which all but replaced butter in pastries The tale of the croissant begins in audience, it is said that Marie Antoinette third-generation baker and the chef of the baking and confectionary innovation of the time, and is often used by French Austria in the 1400s, with the kipfel, a refused, enjoying her beloved kipfel—one FP Patisserie in New York) says that when going on in Vienna at the time. By 1568, bakeries today. crescent-shaped morning pastry. Made of the only comforts to remind her of the pastries bake the butter makes little Vienna was home to a few confectioners’ François Payard, who comes from with brioche-like dough, it was denser home—in private. Many believe that she pockets of steam in the dough, which shops, thanks to the trickle-down influence a long line of bakers, says, “When my and less flaky than the croissant we know christened the kipfel the croissant, thereby creates the layers that give a croissant of the royal court and the increased grandpa and my dad worked together today. The exact history of the kipfel is bringing it into fashion in France. The sto- its unmistakable flakiness. availability of sugar, though sugar was in France, margarine was cheaper. That’s hazy: the word was used in Austrian cui- ry is apocryphal: a flaky pastry going by You know you have a perfect still an expensive luxury and its consump why they were using it, and that’s the sine as far back as the thirteenth that name did not exist until well into Page 50 Page 51 Today, the croissant is ubiquitous dfsavdsa outside of Europe, particularly in the U.S. While French bakeries struggle with Reviews from our editors who have tried out the recipe preserving tradition, pastry chefs in Amer- ica are looking to reinvent the classic croissant.