What French buttery, flaky pastry in a crescent shape is traditionally eaten for breakfast? The answer is a croissant.
A croissant is a crescent-shaped viennoiserie made from yeast-leavened dough laminated with butter. Bakers roll and fold the dough repeatedly, creating alternating layers of dough and fat. During baking, steam separates those layers while yeast expands the dough, producing the pastry’s characteristic lift and flakiness.
Although the croissant is strongly identified with France, its ancestor is the Austrian kipferl, a crescent-shaped pastry documented as far back as the 13th century. The modern French version developed in the early 20th century as bakers adapted Viennese baking traditions to laminated yeast dough.
August Zang’s Viennese bakery in Paris, founded in 1838 or 1839, helped popularize Austrian-style baked goods in France. A croissant is not the same as pain au chocolat: pain au chocolat uses similar dough but is generally rectangular and filled with chocolate. Brioche, by contrast, is rich and buttery but not laminated.