Croissant

A croissant (; French:) is a Viennoiserie in a crescent shape made from a laminated yeast dough that sits between a bread and a puff pastry.

It is buttery and flaky, inspired by the shape of the Austriankipferl, but using the Viennoiserie yeast-leavened laminated dough. Croissants are named for their crescent shape. The dough is layered with butter, rolled and folded several times in succession, then rolled into a thin 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. The modern croissant was developed in the early 20th century, when French bakers replaced the brioche dough of the kipferl with a yeast-leavened laminated dough.

In the late 1970s, the development of factory-made, frozen, preformed but unbaked dough made them into a fast food that could be freshly baked by unskilled labor. The croissant bakery, notably the La Croissanterie chain, was 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 many European countries.