Croissant

A croissant is made from laminated yeast dough (pâte levée feuilletée). A yeast-raised dough is wrapped around a sheet of fat and repeatedly folded and rolled out, building up many alternating layers of dough and fat. A French miller’s technical sheet for this work specifies two double folds and notes that the dough must be colder when laminating with butter; the fat can be butter or margarine. The sheet works with pieces of 60 g.

The croissant descends from the Viennese kipferl. In the late 1830s August Zang, an Austrian artillery officer, opened a Viennese bakery (Boulangerie Viennoise) on rue de Richelieu in Paris; it sold the kipferl and inspired French bakers. The modern croissant was developed by French bakers in the 19th and early 20th centuries; early printed recipes date from 1906 (Auguste Colombié) and 1915 (Sylvain Claudius Goy), who is credited with switching from brioche dough to laminated yeast dough. The story that the kipferl celebrated the Ottoman defeat at Vienna in 1683 is regarded as a legend.

In Czech law such products are fine bakery wares (jemné pečivo) and may be labelled ‘made from laminated yeast dough’.