Croissant
Overview
A croissant is a butter
y flaky pastry
named for its distinctive crescent
shape. It is also sometimes called a crescent, from the French word for "crescent". Croissants are made of a leavened variant of puff pastry
. The yeast
dough
is layered with butter, rolled and folded several times in succession, then rolled into a sheet, a technique called laminating.
Crescent-shaped food breads have been made since the Middle Ages, and crescent-shaped cakes (imitating the often-worshiped Moon) possibly since classical times, but the modern croissant dates to 19th-century Paris.
Croissants have long been a staple of French bakeries and pâtisserie
s.
Butter
Butter is a dairy product made by churning fresh or fermented cream or milk. It is generally used as a spread and a condiment, as well as in cooking applications, such as baking, sauce making, and pan frying...
y flaky pastry
Pastry
Pastry is the name given to various kinds of baked products made from ingredients such as flour, sugar, milk, butter, shortening, baking powder and/or eggs. Small cakes, tarts and other sweet baked products are called "pastries."...
named for its distinctive crescent
Crescent
In art and symbolism, a crescent is generally the shape produced when a circular disk has a segment of another circle removed from its edge, so that what remains is a shape enclosed by two circular arcs of different diameters which intersect at two points .In astronomy, a crescent...
shape. It is also sometimes called a crescent, from the French word for "crescent". Croissants are made of a leavened variant of puff pastry
Puff pastry
In baking, a puff pastry is a light, flaky, leavened pastry containing several layers of fat which is in solid state at 20 °C . In raw form, puff pastry is a dough which is spread with solid fat and repeatedly folded and rolled out and used to produce the aforementioned pastries...
. The yeast
Yeast
Yeasts are eukaryotic micro-organisms classified in the kingdom Fungi, with 1,500 species currently described estimated to be only 1% of all fungal species. Most reproduce asexually by mitosis, and many do so by an asymmetric division process called budding...
dough
Dough
Dough is a paste made out of any cereals or leguminous crops by mixing flour with a small amount of water and/or other liquid. This process is a precursor to making a wide variety of foodstuffs, particularly breads and bread-based items , flatbreads, noodles, pastry, and similar items)...
is layered with butter, rolled and folded several times in succession, then rolled into a sheet, a technique called laminating.
Crescent-shaped food breads have been made since the Middle Ages, and crescent-shaped cakes (imitating the often-worshiped Moon) possibly since classical times, but the modern croissant dates to 19th-century Paris.
Croissants have long been a staple of French bakeries and pâtisserie
Pâtisserie
A pâtisserie is the type of French or Belgian bakery that specializes in pastries and sweets. In both countries it is a legally controlled title that may only be used by bakeries that employ a licensed maître pâtissier ....
s.
