the.com/croissant
a buttery spiral that pretends to be French while secretly being Austrian.
means A crescent-shaped pastry of flaky, buttery layered dough, typically eaten at breakfast.
from From the French croissant, meaning "crescent" or literally "growing" (the present participle of croître, "to grow," from Latin crescere). The shape's story points east: the ancestor is the Austrian kipferl, a crescent roll that long predates the modern version. The popular legend ties the crescent to a 1683 Ottoman siege of Vienna — bakers supposedly mocking the Turkish flag — but that tale is almost certainly folk invention. What's better documented is that the laminated, puff-style croissant we know today took its recognizable form in France, where it borrowed the kipferl's shape and the French word for it.
- origin
- Inspired by Vienna's kipferl, not Paris
- layer count
- Often 27 or more folded dough sheets
- butter ratio
- Can be nearly a third pure butter
- shape meaning
- Crescent honors a defeated Ottoman siege
croissant aux amandes — almond-filled croissant perfected by french bakeries, particularly in paris since the 1800s
pain au chocolat — chocolate-filled croissant variant, officially named in france, often confused with croissants
cronut — croissant-doughnut hybrid created by dominique ansel in new york in 2013