Croissant

 The Rise of the Croissant: Its Global Influence on Pastry Culture

Blinded by its golden flaky crust and layer of buttery foam, the croissant has rightfully earned its title of the most famous pastry in the world. hail from Europe but is now famous around the world forming part of breakfast offerings, bakeries and cafes. It cann also be regarded as a story of a regional culinary process becoming worldwide, which isn’t just food and culinary but also of culture, globalization, and change. This could be summarized by saying that (Like Art) a Croissant is not Only a Baked Good: tracing the journey of the croissant, similar to food in general, like a work of art, is truly crossing borders and taking on different meanings and shapes while in the exchange [it influences and is shaped by] the different cultures. This article focuses on the origin of croissant and the stratospheric impact it yielded to the pastry revolution.

Origins of the Croissant

Most of the people would think croissant as a French delicacy, but in actuality, the origins of the croissant go much further back than that and in a different country at that. The croissant can be traced back to the invention of its predecessor, and it is widely thought that this fist creation was in Austria. Another type of dough product that can be linked back at least to the early part of the 13th century, seen across Eastern Europe, for example, is the crescent biscuit called kipferl. These early biscuits were not made from the laminated dough familiar today as a croissant, but were merely crescent wafer like biscuits.

When people are asked what war introduced them to the croissant then the most common answer will be the battle of Vienna 1683. Also, they heard some noises, coming out from the Ottoman’s attempt on taking over the city; this was during late night while baking, bakers from the city’s cellar. They warned the city’s protectors who stopped the Ottoman assault. Thereby, supposedly the first croissants were baked by the bakers whom the celebrators had in their employ, as croissants were formed in the shape of the half-moon on the ottonian flag. As with most stories involving the two lovers, this text has been well romanticized although it does not have any historical backing. However, the croissant did arrive in France and it is here that the round, buttery, flaky pastry that most people know and love was developed.

the Croissant’s Transformation

However, it was only in the nineteenth century that the form of the croissant as we know it was developed: the French bakers’ conception of the kipferl. One of these was the lamination method which Involves folding butter on the dough in a repeated way until a thin layer is formed. Applying this technique on the crescent like form of the kipferl gave birth to the what we know today as the croissant, from the French word croissant which means crescent.

The croissant was soon linked with France in particular, Paris in specific. And by the end of the 19th century, becomes an important element of breakfast in France, is eaten together with coffee and jam. It was during this period also that the croissant rose to represent the French patisserie. The French cafes and patisseries that began opening throughout the twentieth century exposed guests to Paris and other French cities to the croissant.

The Croissant’s Journey Across Borders

Croissant had become a part of French identity by the middle of the twentieth century but the tradition traveled beyond the borders of France. That is why with the expansion of French culture, which undoubtedly concerns gastronomic cultures, we observe the following. From this time, the croissant started featuring in the cafés, bakeries, and hotels in Europe and indeed global space . This was made easy by the post war economic expansion, travelling, and the exportation of food cultures across the world.

in the United States, the croissant became widespread only in the second half of the twentieth century, and it was in the 1970s and 1980s. The French bakeries also started opening branches in cities as New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles, practiced the Artisanal way of baking and stressing on quality of the French pastries. The croissant which has extremely thin crispy layers and buttery taste, was a gourmet product, that associated the flare of modern coffee shops. Its appeal in America was also helped by its versatility: Some used to have it plain while others preferred chocolate filled one (pain au chocolat) or almond cream filled one.

It was a popular pasty in many countries and the croissant was localised to the regional ingredients and spices. For instance, bakeries in Japan began to introduce croissant with custard or sweet potato flavors in it, so as to fit the locals’ taste. Taken to South Korea, it was interpretated as a blank slate for various flavors sweet red bean paste, ham n cheese besides using western methodology combined with asian ingredients.

Industrialization of the Croissant

With the increase in demand of croissants embracing speed to market was inevitable in order to meet the consumers demands. This led to the changes to the extent that croissants have become industrialized products. Prepared croissants that can be baked as soon as they reached the customer or simply bought frozen, turned into a beloved product in supermarkets and grocery stores all over the world. Several big producers found ways on manufacturing croissants at a very large scale but not entirely removing some of the characteristics of hand made croissants.

The very industrialization that made croissants easier to obtain raised questions about the quality that traditional craftsmen had delivered. Had it not been for the origins of the croissant, many traditionalists were displeased by the mass production of this pastry claiming that the quality of a mechanically produced product cannot be compared to the quality of handmade, artisanal pastries.

But the industrialization of the croissant also lead to its mainstreaming - that is to say, the croissant became a piece of food for the masses. Today, one can speak about croissants in the countries that have anything to do with European Continental or even subcontinental cuisine, in the region stretching from Buenos Aires to Bangkok. The croissant subsequently, as a French bread product can be experienced in both artisanal and in industrialized functional form.

The Croissant’s Influence on Pastry Culture

This article demonstrates how the humble croissant became the epitome of pastry across the world. Due to this, the bakers of various parts of the world have stretched their creativity in practices and came up with half baked meals that incorporate the features of two or more styles. Take for instance the cronut, a product of cross between a croissant and a donut. Called cronut, this past resume was invented by French pastry chef Dominique Ansel in New York in 2013 across the globe and the internet, people would queue for hours just to get a taste of this hybrid dessert. The cronut showed that the various attributes of flaky layers like croissant could be reconfigured into new products that incorporate the best features from other pastries.

subsequent pastry trends have a similar type of development to the croissant. Taking the case of Denmark and Sweden, they have taken the croissant and compiled it with variations to accommodate the regional flavors and stuffings such as marzipan or cardamonom. Todays Middle Eastern bakers were trying with croissant containing pistachio cream or date and they mixed two cultural such as, French and Middle Eastern.

The croissant also emerges as having had a positive impact on emerging conceptions of breakfast and snacking. In many countries, breakfast was more like dinner – breads, meats and cheeses were on the attendees’ plates. Related to this is the croissant, which has made the global proliferation of the sweet breakfast pastry possible because more and more people around the world start their day with something light, sweet, and often buttery. In this respect, the croissant has not only been subversive in complicating the divisions between discrete meals, as it may be consumed alongside coffee at any time of the day.

Croissant in Contemporary Culture

Croissant today is also a living product and always improving or changing its form gradually. In the present century, social media made a great contribution to the croissant’s permanent demand. Instagram has made pastries into an artwork and bakers take the most creative and beautiful photos of croissants that represent nothing other than an art piece. Organic shapes and colors of pastries have seen rainbow croissants while traditional shapes have been filled with less traditional ingredients for the croissant, for example, matcha or salted caramel.

Besides being consumed widely in gourmet baked houses, salads and cafés to paying guests, the croissant has become the platform for globalization of cuisines. From Asia to Europe, from America, bakers try new specialized ingredients leading to an explosion of variant tastes . For instance, in Hong Kong, people turn croissants into a form of pastry by placing taro or lotus seed paste into the croissants while Mexican croissants being the cajeta- a sort of goat’s milk caramel. This fusions are a proof the croissant is a very adaptative pastry and can evolve and impose itself in the cuisines of different countries.

has also, resurgence of artisanal baking movements in cities around the world, resulted to renewed focus to quality and craftsmanship of croissants. Small bakeries in cities from Berlin to Bangkok are going back to old school methods, using superior quality butter and flour to bake croissants that could give Paris a run for its money. This commitment to artisanship combined with the worldwide interest in food as performance has guaranteed that the croissant is not just a pastry, but a status object of gourmet culture.

Conclusion: The Croissant’s Enduring Legacy

The example of the croissant – the pastry which originated in the specific region of Austria and now is truly international symbol of the culture – is the best example of the sensibility of the food item. Once just a curved slice of bread, the pastry now known as croissant has become a power-player of global baking and breakfast industries alike, inspiring all from morning meals to newfangled advances in pastry. It moves to other countries and other civilizations to capture how it changes from one place to another as it meets new ingredients, methods, and palates.

, the croissant: more than the pile of dough, it is a culture, it is tradition combined with innovation, artisanry subjugated to industrial production. It remains a positive cultural force in the development of pastry around the world because it challenges bakers, chefs and the general populace to think outside of the box and come up with new and interesting things for a pastry to represent. Today people can have croissants in their very basic form, meeting the traditional definition or as part of an increasingly diverse range of international cuisines, and its popularity appears to be set to continue. It is, in essence, the love for good food for all to see and indicative of the fact that no matter the culture and globalization that was ever so slowly encroaching itself into our way of life, one could not deny the fundamental love for a good meal.