The croissant is as synonymous with France as the Eiffel Tower and beretsbut tastier!
A perfectly made croissant (which translates to “crescent”) takes a true culinary artist to execute.
The four stops on my croissant journey offered very different iterations of theflaky French-style pastry.
Photo: Shutterstock. Design: Eat This, Not That!
The ideal croissant is a study in fine layers of pastry dough.
But any decent croissant should meet some basic requirements.
IIt should be golden brown with a slight shine and, of course, crescent-shaped!
Photo: Ronnie Koenig, Eat This, Not That!
When done right, this pastry has a mild, buttery sweet taste with a hint of yeast.
And there should be crumbsmany flaky, messy delightful crumbs.
Read on to see all the croissants I tried, ranked from my least favorite to the overall best.
Photo: Ronnie Koenig, Eat This, Not That!
The Dunkin' croissant one was the cheapest one in this survey at $2.39.
What came out was a dry looking pre-sliced round item that appeared more like roll than a croissant.
It looked old, and only the top part was sort of crescent shaped.
Photo: Ronnie Koenig, Eat This, Not That!
The taste:Not great.
Biting in, this croissant had a thick and chewy texturea major no-no.
The light and flaky pastry layers that are essential to the croissant were nowhere to be found.
Photo: Ronnie Koenig, Eat This, Not That!
I saidau revoirand spit it into le garbage.
Already this pastry was the opposite of homemade in my mind.
The shape was hardly crescent-like.
But the insides here were thick and chewy, not light and airy.
The buttery taste also felt a bit synthetic.
The look:This croissant had a longer, thinner shape than any of the others I tried.
There was little to no curve, making it look more like a baguette.
It had a pleasing golden-brown color and a slight egg-wash shine.
It had a homemade look that made me excited to try it.
The taste:Ooh la la!
This croissant was delicate and airy and had many fine layers of pastry dough.
Buttery but not synthetic tasting, it was rich and light at the same time.
I liked that it was not at all greasy and it went down easily with my morning coffee.
Even so, there was one croissant that I liked even better.
The store was lined with cases full of enticing pastries.
Paris Baguette’s croissant is made with wheat flour, butter, sugar, milk powder, and egg.
It was priced at $3.79.
The look:Huge!
The taste:Buttery and delicious.
Now this was the croissant I had been searching for!
The texture was perfectly fluffy and all of the layers of dough came together into one satisfying bite.
My only criticism was that it was slightly greasy.
In other words: it had that certainje ne sais quoi.
