How to eat: croissants (2024)

Trust us, this blog was scheduled long before the unpleasantness, but given the amount of confusion that a certain supermarket’s decision to straighten a morning pastry has caused, it is timely (indeed, of great relief to the nation) that How to Eat will now definitively settle what constitutes the perfect croissant.

Please do not get too twisted up below the line. Ensure you can prove your point. Flaky, pain-ful arguments will not butter-up your fellow contributors. They will make you look like a cronut.

Straight or crescent-shaped?

Where else to start but with this utter nontroversy? A PR coup concocted entirely from hot air, Tesco’s announcement that it will now sell only “straight” croissants is almost, but not quite, irrelevant. Straight or diamond-shaped croissants are already commonplace – not least in France, where, traditionally, straight croissants were a superior all-butter product, deliberately differentiated from the cheaper curved, margarine-based version. Moreover, it is a myth that the croissant’s Austrian forerunner, the kipfel, was created to mimic the Islamic crescent after the Ottoman siege of Vienna. Academics have traced kipfel recipes back to the 13th century.

There is, therefore, no strict historical precedent and certainly no practical necessity for croissants to be curved. Even French food experts as authoritative as, erm, Jean-Christophe Novelli cannot agree on a correct shape. Nonetheless, Tesco changed its croissant for all the wrong reasons – namely, to make it easy to split and fill like a sandwich. The idea that you would spread jam on a croissant or fill it with ham and cheese is anathema to all right-thinking people. Tesco should be ashamed for encouraging it.

When and what?

The croissant is only acceptable as a breakfast food and, unless you live a life of gilded luxury, only at weekends. It is a matter of time, cost and the fact that if you eat them regularly you will collapse of a heart attack at an unfashionably young age.

Connoisseurs insist that you should eat only croissants (all-butter, of course) that have been fait maison and baked that morning. They undoubtedly have a point. Those sound like heavenly pastries. But unless you are a Parisian lucky enough to live near the Malakoff district’s Michel Lyczak or a similar bang-on boulangerie, how likely is it that you will be out at 7am to catch a batch fresh from the oven? Indeed, does no one in France ever have a hangover or a lie-in?

Instead, in all likelihood, you will be eating a supermarket croissant, which, within certain boundaries (stale croissants are a strict no-no), is fine. Like ice-cream or chocolate, there is no such thing as a truly bad croissant, only ascending levels of pleasure. If you can splash as much as 75p on a croissant, some of the supermarket versions are not bad, especially if you warm them. A cold croissant is lifeless and stodgy, a literal and metaphorical pale imitation of its heated cousin. In order to reveal its flaky, buttery charms, in order to ensure maximum contrast between that crisp shell and its soft, pillowing inner folds, a croissant needs warming through. It needs some colour in its cheeks.

A short note on baking your own

People do. Just as some people construct scale models of the Taj Mahal out of matchsticks. Or keep a detailed lawn-mowing diary. These are all innocent activities but untenable for those of us who – how to put this politely? – have a life. Even the quicker cheats’ croissants require hours of proofing, chilling, turning and folding, to create something of often little merit that will be eaten in minutes. You will find How to Eat at a local artisan bakery or in aisle 34 at the supermarket. Life is too short.

Acceptable additions and condiments

The French are sniffy about adding butter to the croissant on the basis that it already contains lots of butter. Nonsense. Not only is this unusually prissy from the country that gave us some of the world’s richest foods, but it dismisses the ultimate croissant moment: chunks of hot croissant torn and liberally smeared with cold, high-quality salted butter.

That combination produces a sweet ’n’ salty, deliriously buttery and fresh-baked taste sensation. One that, due to the refreshing temperature of the cold butter, is unusually moreish for something so calorific. Think of it like this: Chicago invented house music, but Britain created the modern clubbing context in which it became a global phenomenon. In the same way, the French invented the croissant but, by adding more butter, Britain has allowed the croissant to find its highest expression.

The only other thing you need with your croissant is a large cup of coffee in which to quickly dunk it. Where extra butter adds a new layer of luxurious creaminess, coffee offers an earthy, complimentary bitter contrast while intensifying the sweetness of the croissant. It gives the croissant a new, deeper resonance. Alternate the two (buttered chunk, then dunk) and a croissant becomes a true breakfast classic.

Unacceptable additions

Where butter and coffee enlarge the flavours a croissant can deliver, jam and honey narrow them, turning the croissant into a one-dimensional, unappetisingly sweet experience. Likewise, in the ultimate analysis, eating block chocolate with your croissant does not work. Most milk chocolate is too fatty, so that when it warms up it turns each mouthful into a claggy lump (see also, Nutella). In contrast, darker, higher cocoa-solids chocolates are so distinctively bitter and fruity that they dominate unpleasantly.

As for commercial pain au chocolat, they are again too sweet and the chocolate too often has a curiously dusty, waxy or fondant-like texture (not to mention a poor flavour). It is significant that in 2012, when the pain au chocolat became embroiled in an ugly race row, Christian Estrosi, the mayor of Nice, declared that: “Pain au chocolat is an inalienable right of all French children.” Children you will note, not adults. Who, presumably, would not dream of touching them.

As long as it does not get too overwhelmingly sweet (for instance, filling them with marzipan is hideous), there is, perhaps, an argument to be made for some limited croissant use in desserts. For instance, you could top them with caramelised apple, cinnamon and whipped cream. However, using croissants to give a Gallic twist to a traditional British bread ’n’ butter pudding is ludicrous. Croissants absorb moisture like sponges and rapidly turn into a pappy mush. It is a novelty that brings to mind Samuel Johnson’s maxim about dogs walking on their hind legs: “It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.”

As for adding savoury toppings and fillings to this stridently sweet pastry, that is strictly interdit. How to Eat would not be so rash as to say you should never cross the sweet ’n’ savoury streams, but it in this context it is infantile. Why in the name of all that is holy would you want sausages, ham, bacon or gruyère, scrambled eggs or goat’s cheese served on a sugary croissant? Moreover, if you did want that effect, why not use one of the many bizarrely sweet continental sandwich breads that have the marginal advantage of being square.

Drink

Coffee. Hot chocolate is a vile concoction. No other drinks are even in the running.

Optimum number of croissants

One is never enough, three is far too many.

Equipment

A knife may be optional depending on whether or not you want to apply butter, but a plate is essential. Notoriously, the debris scattered by a croissant is second only in its breadth and density to nuclear fallout.

So, croissants, how do you eat yours?