Le croissant

We hope you had a lovely start to 2016 despite the rainy weather in Sydney. Our very first course of the new year, the Summer Intensive French Beginner 1 course, ended yesterday and we truly couldn't have wished for a lovelier group of students! The course ended with a croissant feast so let's talk about le croissant. Here is what Michael Paul, in his wonderful book Sweet Paris, says à propos du croissant:

The iconic breakfast croissant is said to owe its popularity in Paris to the ill-fated Marie Antoinette, who was Austrian by birth. It was supposedly invented by a quick-thinking Viennese baker in 1683, who foiled a plot by Ottoman invaders to tunnel into the city. He was rewarded with a stash of flour, left behind by the Turkish tunnellers. As a mark of his appreciation, he baked a buttery bread in the shape of the crescent emblem on the Ottoman flag and it became the foremost pastry in Vienna. When the Archduchess of Austria married Louis XVI, she brought the recipe to France as a memento of her charmed childhood. It's a good story but probably all a pile of far-fetched piffle - or in this case 'KipferI', a cousin of the croissant that was documented in Austria as far back as the thirteenth century.
 
Notwithstanding the fact that crescent-shaped breads and cakes venerating the moon have been around since the Middle Ages, the French croissant really came into its own in nineteenth-century Paris. The early form of the croissant was popularised by August Zang's Boulangerie Viennoise, and the Viennese Kipferl, which morphed into the croissant, soon graced the breakfast tables of the Parisian haut monde. Then, in the 1920s, a chef with a penchant for puff pastry transformed the ever-evolving Kipferl into the contemporary buttery, flaky croissant that we find irresistible today. 
As any baker will tell you, making the perfect croissant is an exercise in origami. It's all in the folding, or 'laminating' as the technique is commonly known. It sounds intimidating but it's actually rather simple. Authentic croissants are made with a leavened alternative of puff pastry, where the yeast-risen dough is layered with butter, rolled and folded several times in succession, cut into a triangle with a croissant cutter, then rolled into a scroll with a bulging centre which is then curved into its familiar signature shape.

​Connoisseurs of the perfect croissant demand a crunchy, caramelised exterior (called a Maillard reaction) that crackles when you bite into it and, importantly, a soft, honeycombed interior as light as air that smells freshly baked and has a very subtle hint of salt. My own approach is much less sophisticated - I scoff them down with slabs of creamy butter and lashings of a slightly tart, homemade apricot jam from Provence. Almond versions stuffed with nutty paste are a rustic, sweet alternative on this popular puff pastry staple.
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Ranking the best croissants in Paris is about as contentious as French politics. Everyone has their own opinion, and there is no end of knowledgeable blogs devoted to the subject that passionately argue their definitive lists. So I am going to fuel the controversy even further and opt for only one or two bakeries that light my fire. Poilâne and Du Pain et des Idees both do excellent croissants, but when it comes to the crunch, for me it's a close-run thing between Blé Sucré in the 12th and Des Gateaux et du Pain out in the petit-bourgeois 15th. Both achieve perfection.

Sweet Paris: A Love Affair with Parisian Pastries, Chocolates and Desserts - Michael Paul (Hardie Grant Books; 2012) 

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And voilà Trish Deseine's description of the four bakeries mentioned by Michael Paul in her excellent guide, The Paris Gourmet  (Flammarion; 2013):

Poilâne: who has not heard of this legendary and revolutionary baker? His Harvard-educated daughter Apollonia gamely took on the maison ten years ago after the tragic death of her father, when she was just eighteen, and continues to keep up the world-famous quality and tradition. The punitions, their little shortcrust biscuits, are perfect for dunking. 

​8, rue du Cherche-midi • Paris 6e • Tel. +33 (0) 1 48 48 48 89 
49, boulevard de Grenelle • Paris 18e • Tel. +33 (0) 1 48 79 11 49 
38, rue Debelleyme • Paris 3e • Tel. +33 (0) 1 44 61 83 39 • www.poilane.com ​

Blé sucré: no concept store or designer decor here, just an honest to goodness boulangerie-patisserie with the most divine bread and cakes. The madeleines, lightly iced with a sugar coating, are perhaps the best in Paris. The three signature cakes of La maison are: tarte Tatin, melting caramelized apples on a sable (sweetened shortcrust pastry) base rather than the usual unsweetened shortcrust or puff pastry; the Vollon, a mix of chocolate sabayon on almond dacquoise and praline; and the more exotic Aligre, with pineapple confit and a coconut base flavoured with ginger, vanilla and lemon. Heaven.
 
7, rue Antoine Vollon • Paris 12e • Tel. +33 (0) 1 43 40 77 73

Des Gâteaux et du Pain: one would think that choosing and buying cakes would be a joyous thing, but in this store, looking eerily like an undertaker's from the outside, you need to keep your voice down and watch your step. There's hardly a smile from the vendeur, but who cares when in front of you are the most exquisitely made bread, viennoiseries and, oddly, tucked away in the corner, an impressive choice of cakes and pastries? Everything is beautifully wrapped and comes with strict instructions about transport and storage. Make sure you use the right door to leave ... or else. And no photos.
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63, boulevard. Pasteur • Paris 15e . Tel. +33 (0) 1 45 38 94 16 www.desgateauxetdupain.com 

Du Pain et des Idées: ooh, the sacristain with its feather-like pastry and silky crème patissière and the bottom caramelized bit that stuck a little to the baking tray. Ooh, the escargot chocolat pistache. Ooh, the majestic sourdough 'pain des amis'. Everything here is unbelievably good. The antique decor in the shop is gorgeous. One of my top five cake stops in Paris.
 
34, rue Yves Toudic • Paris 10e Tel. +33 (0) 1 42 40 44 52 • www.dupainetdesidees.com 

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Et pour finir, quatre vidéos: the first, dedicated to the history of the croissant, is by our perennially favourite Arte channel programme Karambolage (you'll find the French transcript immediately beneath the video); in the second video, the one and only Gordon Ramsay puts to the test le croissant artisanal and the factory version and in the third video, Monsieur Ramsay shows us how croissants are prepared; finally the fourth video, by TV5 Monde, introduces us both to the history and the preparation of the iconic French pastry. Les voilà et merci à tous :

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Vous aimez les croissants ? Katja Petrovic se penche aujourd’hui sur l’histoire de cette spécialité française qui ne l’a pas toujours été…

Oui, je sais : il n’y a pas de sujet plus éculé que le croissant ! Un vrai cliché : la quintessence du savoir-vivre français… Mais savez-vous qu’en fait, ce fameux croissant n’était pas français à l’origine ? C’est un Autrichien qui a inventé cette sorte de petite corne, en 1683, alors que les Turcs, qui voulaient conquérir Vienne, étaient massés devant les portes de la ville. Pour y parvenir, les soldats ottomans tentèrent de creuser, la nuit, un tunnel passant sous le mur d’enceinte.

Mais c’était compter sans les maîtres boulangers viennois, qui, au travail avant l’aube, entendirent les grattements et les martèlements des Turcs. Ils donnèrent aussitôt l’alarme et les sentinelles mirent en fuite les ennemis stupéfaits. Pour fêter cette victoire, les boulangers créèrent une pâtisserie au levain en forme de croissant, copiant la demi-lune que l’on peut voir sur le drapeau de la Turquie. Et en allemand, on appela cette nouvelle "Delikatesse" un "Hörnchen", une "petite corne".

Un siècle plus tard, en 1770, Marie-Antoinette, fille de l’impératrice d’Autriche Marie-Thérèse, épouse le futur roi Louis XVI, et c’est elle qui introduit la petite corne viennoise à la cour de France. On l’appelle désormais "croissant", tant son aspect rappelle la forme du "croissant de lune". Ce qui nous ramène d’ailleurs à la demi-lune turque. Les Français savent tous plus ou moins que le croissant vient de Vienne. Ne fait-il pas partie des "viennoiseries", au même titre que le pain au chocolat, le pain aux raisins et le chausson aux pommes ?

Et pourtant, à côté de l’Autriche, d’autres nations encore revendiquent l’invention du croissant. La Hongrie, par exemple. En 1686, à l’époque où les Turcs assiègent la capitale, Budapest. Les Turcs voulaient creuser un tunnel sous le mur d’enceinte de Budapest, mais un boulanger… et cætera… et cætera. Vous connaissez déjà cette histoire ; la seule différence réside dans le lieu de l’action ! Même si la France n’est pas à l’origine de la création du croissant, c’est elle qui a le dernier mot dans cette histoire. Car, à la fin du XIXe siècle, le croissant y a tout bonnement été réinventé.

Les Français ont remplacé la pâte utilisée jusqu’alors, qui ressemblait plutôt à celle de la brioche, par une pâte feuilletée donnant la vedette à un ingrédient majeur : le beurre. Enfin, vous n’apprécierez le bon goût du beurre que si vous achetez un "croissant au beurre". Car le "croissant ordinaire", malgré sa jolie forme incurvée, ne contient que de la margarine.

Texte : Katja Petrovic

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