Croissant facts for kids
| Type | Viennoiserie |
|---|---|
| Course | Breakfast |
| Place of origin | France |
| Main ingredients | Yeast-leavened dough, butter |
| Variations | Pain aux raisins, Pain au chocolat |
A croissant is a buttery, flaky, pastry named for its crescent shape. Croissants are made of a layered yeast-leavened dough. The dough is layered with butter, rolled and folded several times in succession, then rolled into a sheet, in a technique called laminating. The process results in a layered, flaky texture, similar to a puff pastry.
Crescent-shaped breads have been made since the Renaissance, and crescent-shaped cakes possibly since antiquity.
Croissants have long been a staple of Austrian and French bakeries and pâtisseries. In the late 1970s, the development of factory-made, frozen, pre-formed but unbaked dough made them into a fast food which can be freshly baked by unskilled labor.
The croissant was explicitly a French response to American-style fast food, and as of 2008 30–40% of the croissants sold in French bakeries and patisseries were baked from frozen dough.
Croissants are a common part of a continental breakfast in France.
Images for kids
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The original Boulangerie Viennoise in 1909 (when it was owned by Philibert Jacquet). The bakery proper is at left and its tea salon at right.
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A Kipferl, a precursor to croissants
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Baked croissants
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St. Martin's croissant from Poznań, Poland
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Croissant rising
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Cross-section, showing texture
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Unbaked dough
See also
In Spanish: Cruasán para niños
