The croissant was born in Austria and raised in France. Its ancestor is the kipferl, a crescent-shaped roll that Vienna was baking long before Paris had heard of it. It seems to have reached France in the late 1830s, when an Austrian entrepreneur, August Zang, opened a Viennese bakery in Paris. But the croissant we know today, puffed and shattering, made of dozens of thin layers of butter and dough, was the work of French bakers, and recipes for it only appear around 1900. And the famous tale of Viennese bakers foiling an Ottoman siege? That part is a legend.
The kipferl, Vienna's crescent
Crescent-shaped breads have been baked in the German-speaking lands for a very long time, and the kipferl is sometimes traced back to the Middle Ages. It came in many forms, plain or enriched with butter, milk or sugar. But it was a bread, soft and tender, not the layered pastry that came later.
The shape has never gone out of fashion in Austria. The kipferl is still eaten as a breakfast roll, and at Christmas, Austrian and German kitchens bake trays of Vanillekipferl, small crescent biscuits of ground nuts and butter rolled in vanilla sugar.
The siege of Vienna: a legend worth knowing
The story goes like this. In 1683 an Ottoman army laid siege to Vienna. One night, bakers working in the early hours heard digging beneath their cellars: the besiegers were tunnelling under the city walls. The bakers raised the alarm and the city held. To celebrate, they baked rolls in the shape of the crescent on the Ottoman flags, so the Viennese could, quite literally, eat their enemy.
It is a wonderful story, and the siege was real. It ended in September 1683, when a relief army led by the Polish king John III Sobieski broke the Ottoman lines. But nothing written at the time connects the siege with bread. The tale appears in print much later, crescent-shaped rolls were being baked in Austria well before 1683, and the details change with each teller. Some versions move the story to the siege of Budapest in 1686. Food historians treat it as a legend, and so should we.
A second legend says that the young Marie Antoinette brought the croissant from Vienna when she married the future Louis XVI in 1770. There is no better evidence for that one.
A Viennese bakery in Paris
The records do show a man named August Zang, a former Austrian artillery officer. Around 1838 or 1839 he opened a bakery called the Boulangerie Viennoise on the rue de Richelieu in Paris. Viennese baking was fashionable, and Zang sold it with flair: Viennese breads, and among them the kipferl.
Parisians loved it, and French bakers were soon making their own versions. In France the whole family of rich breakfast breads, from croissants to pains au chocolat, is still called viennoiserie, a lasting nod to Vienna. Zang himself did not stay in the bread business. He went back to Vienna, and in 1848 he founded the newspaper Die Presse.
How the French made it flaky
For a while the French crescent was still a kipferl at heart, a shaped and enriched roll. By the middle of the nineteenth century it had picked up the name croissant, which is simply French for "crescent". The real change came when bakers combined the Viennese roll with an old French technique, the lamination used for puff pastry.
Laminated dough is made by wrapping a slab of cold butter in dough, then rolling and folding it again and again until butter and dough form a stack of very thin layers. In the oven, the water in the dough and butter turns to steam and pushes the layers apart while the butter crisps them. Croissant dough also contains yeast, so the result is both flaky and light, with an open, honeycomb crumb inside. Recipes for this layered croissant appear in French books only at the start of the twentieth century. Over the following decades it became the classic Parisian breakfast, and later the world's.
Many Parisian bakeries follow a convention worth knowing: a straight croissant is made with butter, while a curved one may be made with other fats. It is a custom rather than a rule, but it is a useful clue at the counter.
Croissants at home, without the heartbreak
Making croissants from scratch takes the best part of two days. It is a lovely project, and it rewards care more than talent. If you try it:
- Keep everything cold. Butter and dough should be equally cool and pliable. If the butter breaks into shards, it is too cold; if it smears or leaks, it is too warm. Chill the dough between folds.
- Fold patiently. Most recipes use three folds, with a rest in the fridge after each one. Gentle, even rolling matters more than speed.
- Prove somewhere warm, not hot. If the butter melts while the croissants rise, the layers fuse and you lose the flakiness. They are ready when they look puffy and wobble slightly when you shake the tray.
- Bake them dark. A pale croissant is a soft croissant. Take them to a deep golden brown.
On a weekday, there is no shame in starting with ready-made dough. The Air Fryer Croissants in The Everyday Air Fryer use a tube of shop-bought croissant dough. You roll it up, brush it with egg and cook it at 160 °C (320 °F) for 8–10 minutes. Space the croissants well apart, seam-side down, so they have room to puff, and check a few minutes early, because air fryers vary.
- Revive yesterday's. A few minutes in a hot oven or air fryer brings the crackle back to a day-old croissant. Watch it closely so it does not burn.
- Turn stale into something better. Almond croissants are traditionally a way to use up the previous day's bake. You split the croissants, brush them with syrup, fill them with almond cream and bake them again. Stale croissants also make a superb bread-and-butter pudding.
- Look inside. Cut a good croissant in half and you should see a honeycomb of open holes. A dense, bready inside means the layers merged somewhere along the way.
For more ideas, browse pastry recipes in the finder, or see all twelve cookbooks together.
Questions people ask
Who invented the croissant?
No single person. The croissant grew out of the Austrian kipferl, which reached Paris in the late 1830s through August Zang's Viennese bakery. French bakers later made it with laminated dough, and recipes for that version appear around 1900.
Is the croissant Austrian or French?
It is fair to say both. The crescent shape and the original roll are Austrian. The flaky, buttery pastry that the world now calls a croissant was developed in France.
Did the croissant come from the siege of Vienna?
Almost certainly not. No evidence from the time links bakers or bread to the Ottoman siege of 1683, and crescent-shaped rolls were baked in Austria before it. The story is a legend.
What is the difference between a croissant and a kipferl?
A traditional kipferl is a crescent-shaped bread roll, often enriched but not layered. A croissant is made from laminated yeast dough, folded with butter into many thin layers that puff and flake in the oven.