Key place: PARIS, FRANCE | Le croissant

People can eat croissants at breakfast, in the afternoon, with tea or coffee, at lunch or as a snack, as bread or as a sweet. You can eat it by itself or add cheese, ham, butter, jam, cream, chocolate, spinach…. It is typically made with puff pastry (laminated dough filled with butter), which gives it that crunchy feeling we all love. Nowadays, there are different types of croissants, with different types of dough, but the shape is usually the same: a crescent shape.

“Croissant” means “crescent” in French. And “croissant” is a very typical French delicacy that has become incredibly popular. Except it was originally Austrian… and it only came to be in the 19th century, when an Austrian man opened a pastry shop to sell Austrian delicacies in Paris. These delicacies were based on a typical Austrian bread, with centuries of existence, which had a crescent shape.

No matter. “Le croissant” changed enough to become a French product that has been “exported” to the whole world and it is now quite different from that typical Austrian crescent bread. And, because food is always evolving and changing, croissants gave rise to many other similar delicacies, like the pain au chocolat. In truth, nowadays, you may find pastry called “croissants” without the typical crescent shape, but the spirit remains.

In literature, you can find some books with “croissant” in the title. Usually it is a romance, but it can be a rural crime mystery. However, most likely they are all set in France. There are also some references to croissants in films and TV series. Probably the “coolest” scene in the movies is when Meryl Streep (or rather, her character) bakes croissants from scratch.