Croissants ? Not so French after all…

On a bright, sunny  morning, I was enjoying a “café-croissant” at one of my local bakeries in Pimlico (“Quartiers” in Warwick Way),  when I suddenly asked myself why this delicious pastry had such a funny shape… While enjoying the unique taste of  the delicate, golden, crescent-shaped roll, I started investigating on Google… and found many interesting theories about “croissants” …the most remarkable being that they are not French at all!


Here are a few stories about its origins:

The Battle of Vienna
In 1683, during the Ottoman siege of Vienna, legend says that a baker working late at night heard the Turks tunnelling under the walls of the city and alerted the military.  The military collapsed the tunnel in on the Turks and eliminated the threat, saving the city.  The baker baked a crescent shaped pastry,  called “kipfel”, in the shape of the Turk’s Islamic emblem, the crescent moon, so that when his fellow Austrians bit into the croissant, they would be symbolically “devouring” the Turks.

Marie-Antoinette and the “Croissant”
Another legend is that Marie-Antoinette, Louis XVI’s Austrian bride, introduced the croissant to France.  Recalling memories of her favourite pastry from homeland, she requested the royal bakers to replicate it.  Nonetheless food historians question this as there are no records of the pastry in the numerous lists of foods from that time.

August Zang:  an Austrian in Paris…
An Austrian artillery officer, August Zang founded a Viennese bakery at 92 rue de Richelieu in Paris, in 1839.  This bakery served Viennese specialities including the “kipfel” and inspired French bakers who turned it into what is now known as “croissant”.

It seems that no printed recipe for the present-day croissants was written before the early 20th century and the earliest French reference to “croissants” was found in Payen’s “Des Substances Alimentaires”, published in 1853.  Will we ever know the true story of “croissants”? Probably not… This should not prevent us from enjoying their unmistakable taste!

Written by Florence Tilkens. Florence is Social Media & Marketing Manager at FOCUS.

For more information about FOCUS visit:  www.focus-info.org