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a Journal of Foodways and Culture 5:2: n. pag. © American Folklore Society 2017

The Way of the Croissant: Traditional 
Perspectives On A Traditional Pastry1

By: Rachel Hopkin

Abstract

This investigation draws on concepts that have shaped the discipline of 
folklore since its inception to exact a fresh encounter with a transnationally 
popular item of Viennoiserie: the crescent-shaped pastry known as the 
croissant. Their application to this ephemeral foodways item sheds light on 
the croissant’s roots, dissemination, and distinct permutations. I discuss 
the origins of the pastry in the light of historic-geographic methodologies; 
its diffusion and evolution with reference to scholarship on tradition 
bearers, oikotypification, intertextuality and the role of the individual in 
perpetuating a tradition; and matters of its commodification and authenticity 
through consideration of how tradition functions in the modern age. Finally, 
through an autoethnographic approach, I draw on personal experience to 
consider one way in which croissant consumption may be traditionalized. 

Key Words: croissant; food consumption; food 
performance; pastry; tradition; transmission

Introduction

These days, I am highly conscious of my croissant-consumption, but I don’t 
remember the first one I ate. I was probably a toddler and on one of many 
family holidays in France, since the combination of having Francophile 
parents and being brought up in the southeast of England—and therefore just 
a short trip away from the land of boulangerie—meant that my early years 
were marked by almost annual trips across the Channel. Initially, I would 
have eaten croissants in the utterly unconscious manner that aligns with the 



Hopkin, Rachel. 2016. “The Way of the Croissant.” Digest: 
a Journal of Foodways and Culture 5:2: n. pag. © American Folklore Society 2017

very first stage of Honko’s “folklore process” (2013 [1991]). The folk group 
was my family and—although my parents were surely aware that croissants 
were something apart from our everyday world—I would not have “noticed, 
recognized or emphasized” the pastry because it would have been simply 
“an organic part of everything that” happened (2013 [1991]:39). My level of 
awareness would have evolved though, and perhaps by the time I reached five 
or six, I had arrived at stage three of Honko’s process and become one of the 
many “external discoverers” of this particular pastry, at least to the extent 
of recognizing that the croissant was something that seemed to be French.

My croissant-eating process is now well into Honko’s concept of “second life of 
tradition” (2013 [1991]:48). Every time I enjoy a croissant these days, I recycle 
material “in an environment that differs from its original cultural context” 
(2013 [1991]:48). After all, I am no longer a child and have not been on holiday 
with my family to France for many years. Instead, when I now choose to eat 
a croissant of a morning, I am performing a small act of homage towards a 
lovely aspect of my childhood. I am intentionally acknowledging a connection 
with the past and with my familial cultural inheritance, and doing so in a 
manner that serves me in the present and is constitutive of my current life 
experience. I have meaningfully traditionalized my experience of the pastry, 
even invented a tradition for myself, and done so in a way that speaks to 
many themes that recur in the contemplation of tradition itself. As a result, 
I have gained, in Honko’s words, an “understanding of tradition even in a 
way that might not be possible by a genuine performance” (2013 [1991]:48). 

I will share more on my traditionalization of croissant-consumption later. 
First, though, I want to explore “The Way of the Croissant” using lenses 
afforded by select folkloristic understandings of the word “tradition.” Given 
that interrogating the term is, in and of itself, an acknowledged tradition 
within folkloristics (Glassie 1995, Noyes 2009, “Introduction” to Cashman et 
al. 2011), there is no shortage of lenses from which to choose. This paper draws 
on concepts that have informed the discipline of folklore since its inception. It 
is notable that the majority of folkloristic theories and approaches regarding 
tradition have been generated in the course of studying oral and written 
texts. Here I apply them to an ephemeral foodways item and consider how 
they serve to shed light on this transnationally popular item of Viennoiserie, 



Hopkin, Rachel. 2016. “The Way of the Croissant.” Digest: 
a Journal of Foodways and Culture 5:2: n. pag. © American Folklore Society 2017

in particular on its roots, dissemination, and on distinct permutations. 

Although iterations of the croissant are probably available on every 
continent in the world, the pastry is most commonly associated with France. 
Because its provenance is nevertheless contested, I first examine how 
historic-geographic methodologies can assist in evaluating varying origin 
claims for the croissant. Next I make reference to scholarship on tradition 
bearers and oikotypification to conjecture about the pastry’s diffusion and 
evolution, an  area of inquiry to which a consideration of intertextuality 
also contributes. These concepts, along with discussion of the role of the 
individual in perpetuating a tradition, go on to assist my analysis of specific 
croissants. I then show how scholarship on heritage making, commodification, 
authenticity and traditionalization proves salient to croissant study. 

Besides utilizing academic texts, I draw on my personal study (and 
consumption) of numerous iterations of the pastry, my fieldwork interviews 
(although I directly cite only one of these in this paper), as well as 
relevant newspaper reports, and websites. My order of business begins 
by establishing precisely what I mean when I use the word “croissant.”

Definitions, Patterns, Rules, Laws, and the Croissant 

Recent evaluations of “tradition” usually allow for at least three basic 
understandings of the term: a process, a product, and/or a construction 
or attitude (see, for example, Noyes 2009, Kaplan 2013:124).2 A croissant 
fits most readily into the category of “product” but beyond that, how can 
it be classified? In pondering this, I exhibit a concern that has absorbed 
folklorists for decades, including early scholars like Edwin Hartland 
who understood the discipline to be “a science of tradition” (quoted in 
Bronner 1998:12). For example, Olrik sought to establish the “epic laws” 
governing folk narrative (1999 [1908]), Propp laid out essential elements 
around which the Russian fairy tale was shaped (1999 [1928]), and Dundes 
mapped a “structural typology” of North American Indian folktales (1965 
[1963]). Abrahams brought similar efforts to bear on “process” (1976) and 
also sought to account for this enduring folkloristic preoccupation with 



Hopkin, Rachel. 2016. “The Way of the Croissant.” Digest: 
a Journal of Foodways and Culture 5:2: n. pag. © American Folklore Society 2017

demarcation. It is, he wrote, by naming certain patterns of expression that 
one is able to “talk about the traditional forms and the conventional contents 
of artistic representation, as well as the patterns of expectation which 
both the artist and audience carry into the aesthetic transaction” (193).

What then of patterns of expression and expectation when the traditional 
form in question is a croissant, with a baker the artist, and a consumer the 
audience? Or perhaps it is better to describe them as “maker” and “user” 
respectively since these are the terms Abrahams deemed more appropriate for 
forms of material culture (213). The croissant itself conforms with Abrahams’ 
outline of a static form since the user usually need not directly interact with 
the maker (though perhaps could if the maker were within easy reach of 
the point of sale). However, if the pastry in question were a mass-produced 
iteration whose maker or makers were so “far removed from” the user that 
personal interaction between them would be all but impossible, Abrahams 
would label it a product “of technology” and not folklore at all (213). 

Continuing in my quest to pin down the patterns which govern and 
differentiate the croissant from other dough-based fare, I turned to Larousse 
Gastronomique, the venerable French encyclopedia of gastronomy, which 
defines the item as a “crescent-shaped roll generally made with leavened 
dough” (Gastronomic Committee 2001:372). It also points out that boulangers 
“usually sell two sorts of croissants: those made with butter and ‘the 
others’, which no law obliges them to declare are ‘made with margarine’” 
(Gastronomic Committee 2001:372).3 Another respected source comes 
courtesy of the diplomat-turned-food historian Alan Davidson. Davidson—
who founded the food journal Petits Propos Culinaires and co-founded the 
Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery—is also the author of The Oxford 
Companion to Food. In it, he proclaims that “croissant” is “a French word 
meaning crescent or crescent-shaped” and “the name traditionally given to 
a buttery breakfast roll or bread popular in France ” (1999:228). He adds 
that “croissants are made with a yeast-based dough, rolled to incorporate 
the butter exactly as is done when making puff pastry” (1999:228). 

Moving on from Davidson, I lighted on the influential American cookbook 
Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child and Simone Beck. 



Hopkin, Rachel. 2016. “The Way of the Croissant.” Digest: 
a Journal of Foodways and Culture 5:2: n. pag. © American Folklore Society 2017

Child and Beck’s view of croissants is both expansive and emphatic:

The most delicious of French croissants, to our mind, are those 
called croissants de boulanger, which are made of risen yeast-
milk-and-flour dough that is flattened out, slathered with butter, 
folded in three, and rolled and folded again three times as though 
you were making French puff pastry. There are other formulas 
for croissants, including some which are really puff pastry or 
brioche dough rolled into crescent shapes. And in some of the 
quick methods the yeast dough has only a short single rise, 
resulting in a semi-puff pastry. None of these, to our mind, 
produces the tenderly layered, puffy, deliciously buttery croissant 
one dreams of. The old classic method does just this—and why 
go to all the trouble of making croissants otherwise? (1970:96)

With these sources to guide me, along with my perusal of various recipes 
and, of course, my own extensive experience of croissant consumption, 
I decided—tongue firmly in cheek—to formulate my own “Epic Laws of 
the Croissant.” Herewith, I proclaim that these four laws taken together 
can be used to determine the measure of the pastry. A true croissant: 

(Law 1) —is a baked pastry that either takes a crescent shape, 
or has been straightened in such a way that a whisper of 
the crescent form remains, even if it is all but silent (this 
is because, thanks to a convention established by French 
bakers, croissants aux beurre, or butter croissants, are 
typically distinguished by the straightened form from 
those made with other fats, which are rounded); 

(Law 2) —is rolled into said shape from a triangular, flattened 
piece of yeasted dough, typically of white wheat flour, that has 
been laminated through repeated folding and rolling with the fat.4 

(Law 3) —is ideally made with butter, though other 
fats—generally margarine—are often substituted.5 

(Law 4) —is associated with France (even though 



Hopkin, Rachel. 2016. “The Way of the Croissant.” Digest: 
a Journal of Foodways and Culture 5:2: n. pag. © American Folklore Society 2017

that association may be purely symbolic).

The Philology of the Croissant 

The folkloristic engagement with discerning rules, delineating patterns and 
distilling structures necessitates access to multiple examples of whichever 
item or genre is under consideration and so has both fueled and been fueled 
by the collection of data. This was never truer than during the first half of the 
20th century when the historic-geographic method was in vogue. Rooted in 
the philological study of the origins, development and diffusion of languages, 
the historic-geographic method was developed and primarily used as a means 
of approaching the texts of folk narratives, but it also was applied in early 
folkloristic studies of foodways with scholars recording modes of production, 
recipes, ingredients, and utensils (Long 2015:12). However, the croissant 
does not, alas, appear to have fallen within the purview of food scholars who 
espoused this methodology and thus we lack an index of early sightings, 
tastings, and mentions of the pastry. As it is, convincingly rigorous scholarship 
regarding the croissant’s origins is surprisingly hard to come by. Meanwhile 
so many conflicting stories exist about where the croissant is supposed to have 
first appeared, they could almost be considered a tale type in their own right.

A slim history of the pastry by Australian journalist David Halliday begins 
with a mention of the earliest known representation of the crescent form as 
carved onto a Sumerian ivory cylinder c. 2450 BC (2010:2), though Halliday 
contends that the “first glimpse of the croissant” was not spied until almost 
two millennia later in c. 500 BC, courtesy of the crescent-shaped breads 
baked in Ancient Greece to honor the moon-goddess Artemis (2010:6). He 
then states that “Austrian scholars from the museum of Vienna” confirm that 
“crescent-shaped pastries” known as a Kipfel or Kipferl date back to 13th 
century Vienna (2010:10-11). Allegedly made by bakers who wanted to pay 
homage to Duke Leopold VI for his involvement in the fifth crusade, the pastry’s 
shape was a reference to the sickle-moon symbol that was associated with the 
Byzantine Empire which was one of the targets of that holy war. It is these 
which Halliday designates as “the first croissants” though he clarifies that they 
were actually “simple glazed bread rolls and almond biscuits” (2010:11-12). 



Hopkin, Rachel. 2016. “The Way of the Croissant.” Digest: 
a Journal of Foodways and Culture 5:2: n. pag. © American Folklore Society 2017

Larousse Gastronomique tells a different story, asserting that the croissant:

. . . originated in Budapest in 1686, when the Turks were besieging 
the city. To reach the center of the town, they dug underground 
passages. Bakers, working during the night, heard the noise made 
by the Turks and gave the alarm. The assailants were repulsed and 
the bakers who had saved the city were granted the privilege of 
making a special pastry in the form of a crescent in memory of the 
emblem on the Ottoman flag (Gastronomic Committee 2001:372). 

Given the influential status of the French classic culinary reference book, it 
is perhaps not surprising that this version of the story has been oft repeated, 
not least in James Trager’s Food Chronology (1995:141). However, Trager also 
offers an alternative, the provenance of which is unclear. For the location, we 
return to Vienna, but the year is 1683 rather than the 13th century. Many of 
the other details Trager offers bear distinct similarities with the Budapest 
version: Vienna was under siege by the Turks; Viennese bakeries were located 
in cellars; bakers who were working through the night “heard digging and 
hammering sounds, realized that the Turks were trying to tunnel beneath 
the city’s walls, and (. . .) sounded the alarm”; the Turks were driven back 
and when the siege finally ended, the heroic bakers created a celebratory 
crescent-shaped pastry called a Kipfel to mark the occasion (1995:139-40).6 

As a folklorist, I am of course as interested in oral sources as textual ones. 
Whilst working on this paper I chanced to meet a Ph.D. student by the name of 
Trisha Myers whose research is focused on the Ottoman Empire. I immediately 
asked her what she knew of the origins of the croissant. Her response, 
which she later confirmed in an email dated April 3, 2015, was as follows: 

In the context of the new Franco-Ottoman alliance [which had 
taken place in 1536] François I ordered the creation of a pastry/
food in the shape of a croissant to celebrate the friendship 
between the Ottomans and the French to be consumed at some 
kind of celebration upon the arrival of an Ottoman delegation.

This version was new to me and I did some research to see if I could find 
it repeated elsewhere. I was led to a recipe book by baking and pastry 
chef Michel Suas, the founder of the San Francisco Baking Institute. Suas 



Hopkin, Rachel. 2016. “The Way of the Croissant.” Digest: 
a Journal of Foodways and Culture 5:2: n. pag. © American Folklore Society 2017

mentions the 1683 Vienna origin story—though refers to the resulting 
pastry item as a Hörnchen rather than a Kipfel—but also states that, “in 
the culinary inventory of Patrimoine Français, mention is made of a cake 
in the shape of a croissant served during a banquet given in Paris by the 
Queen of France in 1549 to commemorate the alliance of François Ier with 
le Grand Turc” (2009:330). No citation details are given for this Patrimoine 
Français and as yet I have been unable to find out anything else about it.

None of these sources offers much detail about the pastries mentioned in the 
discussion of the croissant’s origin beyond their being crescent shaped. Bearing 
in mind my “Epic Laws of the Croissant,” I found this opacity unhelpful; after 
all, form alone does not a croissant make. I was delighted to find that Alan 
Davidson shared this opinion, for he writes that there “is more to the croissant 
than shape” (1999:228). In The Oxford Companion to Food, Davidson makes 
no mention of the 16th century France origin story but does refer to those 
of 17th century Vienna and Budapest, albeit with a variation: in each case it 
is just a single baker who denounces the tunneling Turks and then asks for 
“no reward other than the exclusive right to bake crescent-shaped pastries 
commemorating the incident” (1999:232). However, both stories appear 
in a section headed “Culinary Mythology.”7 Meanwhile, under the entry 
“Croissant,” Davidson narrows down the pastry’s provenance to some time 
between the latter half of the 19th century and the early 1900s. His reasoning 
is based on two key areas of evidence: (1) that croissants are found throughout 
France, and (2) that the earliest printed references to the item are found in 
French texts. Among the sources he cites are Payen’s 1853 publication of Des 
substances alimentaires which contains a reference to “les croissants;” the 
first edition of Littré’s French dictionary which appeared a decade later and 
wherein the croissant was defined as “a little crescent-shaped bread or cake;” 
and the first “true croissant recipe,” which was published in 1906 as part of 
Colombie’s Nouvelle Encyclopédie Culinaire (1999:228). Davidson’s argument 
thus conforms very neatly to the parameters set out by historic-geographic 
methodology and it was also the one I found most persuasive. As a result, 
although scholarship based upon the tenets of the historic-geographic method 
rather fell out of vogue in the mid 20th century (with notable exceptions and 
defenders; see, for example, Goldberg 2010), I am convinced it continues to 
have value as a research tool in studies of food origins and dissemination.



Hopkin, Rachel. 2016. “The Way of the Croissant.” Digest: 
a Journal of Foodways and Culture 5:2: n. pag. © American Folklore Society 2017

Croissant “Bearing” and Oikotypification

My next scholarly port of call is the work of one of the earliest critics of the 
historic-geographic method, Carl von Sydow. In particular I want to focus 
on his insights regarding tradition bearers and oikotypes. For illustrative 
purposes, I shall take one of the non-Gallic croissant-origin stories outlined 
above and—since the croissant forms part of a broader genre of French 
bakery items made with yeast, sugar, butter, and eggs labeled Viennoiserie 
(Suas 2009:305)—I am going to opt for the 1683 Vienna version. If the 
Viennese Kipfel (or Hörnchen) really were the proto-croissant, then who 
bore it westwards and how did it come to be so popular in France?

According to James Trager, the figure we have to thank was Austrian 
Archduchess Marie Antoinette upon her move to Versailles in 1770 ahead of 
her marriage to the French dauphin, later to be crowned Louis XVI (1995:170). 
If so, perhaps the initial popularity of the foreign aristocrat smoothed the 
acceptance of this particular culinary tradition, given that the culture of 
her native land was otherwise generally more likely to inspire fear and 
contempt amongst the French people (Kaiser 2003).  Self-styled and self-
published “French bread historian” Jim Chevallier has another bearer in 
mind: an Austrian ex-army officer by the name of August Zang (2009).8 

The entrepreneurial Zang opened the Boulangerie Viennoise in the late 1830s 
on Paris’s then-fashionable Rue de Richelieu. His establishment quickly became 
immensely popular. Baking rivals took note and versions of the Kipfel began 
to appear in bakeries across Paris and beyond. Over time and in a manner 
that fits von Sydow’s theory, an oikotype emerged that was appropriate to the 
new location and which transformed what had originally been a “hard roll” 
(Bourguignon 1996:397). French pâtissiers added yeast and copious quantities 
of butter (or butter-substitute), layering fat and dough into a characteristic 
lamination, from which the familiar flaky croissant eventually emerged. It 
would go on to “become a traditional French breakfast treat” (Trager 1995:170), 
as well as “one of the most familiar French pastries to those living outside 
France, ubiquitous in bakeries through the world” (Suas 2009:330).9 



Hopkin, Rachel. 2016. “The Way of the Croissant.” Digest: 
a Journal of Foodways and Culture 5:2: n. pag. © American Folklore Society 2017

Intertextuality and the Croissant

In 1995, Henry Glassie described tradition as a “volitional, temporal 
action” (409) which brings “about the creation of the future out of the 
past. A continuous process situated in the nothingness of the present, 
linking the vanished with the unknown” (395). Into the spaces that 
open up between these pasts, presents, and futures comes the concept 
of intertextuality and, more importantly, intertextual gaps. Intertextual 
gaps occur when a fresh interpretation of a generic form deviates from 
past performances—often through reaction to aspects of the present 
context—and thus becomes an emergent expression (Bauman 2004:7). 
The dimensions of these gaps can vary substantially and there is no 
doubt that where the croissant is concerned, “deviations abound” (Suas 
2009:330). I shall therefore restrict myself to the brief examination of 
one particular iteration which I experienced courtesy of Pistacia Vera. 

Photo 1. Pistacia Vera, April 2015. Photo: Rachel Hopkin.



Hopkin, Rachel. 2016. “The Way of the Croissant.” Digest: 
a Journal of Foodways and Culture 5:2: n. pag. © American Folklore Society 2017

Pistacia Vera is based in Columbus, Ohio (Photo 1) and is, according to its 
website, a “pastry kitchen and café.” Every day, Pistacia Vera’s carte du 
jour offers a “rye croissant” which in many respects corresponds with my 
“Epic Laws of the Croissant”: it has a typical shape, it is yeasted, layered, 
flaky and buttery, and the fact that it is described as a “croissant” alone is 
sufficient to establish a symbolic connection to France (Photo 2). However, 
the flour is made, at least in part, from rye. Moreover, the pastry is topped 
with caraway seeds before baking. Both rye flour and caraway seeds are 
staples of many central European bakery items but why would they appear 
in this particular context? My surmise is as follows: Pistacia Vera is located 
in the Columbus neighborhood called German Village. As its name implies, 
German Village is a district that was settled by an influx of immigrants from 
the central European region now known as Germany during the mid 1800s 
(Conte 1994). This rye croissant is therefore effectively making intertextual 
links to two different genres—French Viennoiserie and German Brot—and 
my conjecture is that the latter functions as a means of acknowledging, 
paying homage even, to the history of Pistacia Vera’s location.

Photo 2. Pistacia Vera rye croissant, April 2015. Photo: Rachel Hopkin.



Hopkin, Rachel. 2016. “The Way of the Croissant.” Digest: 
a Journal of Foodways and Culture 5:2: n. pag. © American Folklore Society 2017

The Individual and the Croissant: Artist, Performer, Consumer

The Pistacia Vera rye croissant also appears to show how an individual 
can shape a tradition. The establishment’s founder and head chef is 
Spencer Budros and if it was he who devised this particular culinary 
riff on two pre-existing dough-based traditions, presumably he was 
drawing on his training and experience, on his imagination and his 
individual taste, on recyclable elements from a relevant past, along 
with materials available to him in the present, to enact a fresh pastry 
synthesis that both maintains and changes the croissant tradition.

The importance of the individual in the maintenance of a tradition and its 
ongoing evolution rose to prominence during the so-called “performance 
turn” in folkloristics. Among the characteristics of that scholarly paradigm 
shift were a redirection of focus from texts to contexts, an awareness of 
the responsibility borne by the performer, and an understanding of the 
audience’s ability to shape any given rendering. Hymes’ “Ethnography 
of Speaking” was an important constituent of the performance turn and 
led to what Lucy Long terms the “Ethnography of Eating.” Central to an 
“Ethnography of Eating” approach is the “food event” concept where all 
choices made represent “the enactment of the individual’s history and 
identity responding to the specific context” with any meaning conveyed or 
understood thereby being “contingent on the situation” (Long 2015:284). 

In their introduction to a 2011 collection of essays (and festschrift 
for Henry Glassie) that is appropriately entitled The Individual and 
Tradition: Folkloristic Perspectives, editors Cashman, Mould and 
Shukla explain why folklorists attend to the embodied particular:

In order to interpret and to generalize—to earn conclusions—
folklorists gather information from specific individuals 
because tradition is enacted only through an individual’s 
act of creative will. This starting point—the study of 
tradition through attention to the individual—is not merely 
a methodological necessity (one must start somewhere), but 
more significantly a matter of philosophical conviction (2).



Hopkin, Rachel. 2016. “The Way of the Croissant.” Digest: 
a Journal of Foodways and Culture 5:2: n. pag. © American Folklore Society 2017

A few pages later, they compare the individual within a tradition to Claude 
Lévi-Strauss’s bricoleur: “a crafty recycler who constructs new possibilities 
out of available handed-down raw materials, meeting present needs” (4).

Photo 3. Michelle Kozak after a busy morning at Clintonville 
Farmers Market, May 2015. Photo: Rachel Hopkin.

To illustrate how some of these ideas work in practice, I shall draw on a series 
of email communications which took place between myself and Michelle 
Kozak during March 2015. Michelle is the chef/proprietor of the Ohio-
based Pâtisserie Lallier and since 2009 she has provided “French pastries 
and desserts” to numerous businesses in the city of Columbus, in addition 
to maintaining a personal presence at a number of local farmers’ markets 
(Photo 3). On the “About Us” page of the Pâtisserie Lallier website, the text 
indicates Michelle has a personal connection to the land of the croissant:

In France, pastry shops are known as pâtisseries, and 
many times these stores take the name of the chef who 
founded them. Michelle’s grandfather’s family, the Lalliers, 
came to this country from France in the 1800s. 

Despite her ancestry, Michelle herself did not visit France until she was 



Hopkin, Rachel. 2016. “The Way of the Croissant.” Digest: 
a Journal of Foodways and Culture 5:2: n. pag. © American Folklore Society 2017

in her late teens, though she had already enjoyed the croissants of a local 
Columbus French-style bakery. Once she reached adulthood, her career 
took a number of different turns. She had been working as a banker 
with Chase for almost a decade when she decided to take a four-week 
intensive basic pastry course at Le Cordon Bleu Cookery School [LCB] 
in Paris. I asked her if her having French forebears had influenced that 
decision but she demurred. Instead she explained that her interest was:

. . . separate from the family because I don’t think I really 
knew about the French heritage so much until later in life 
after my love of that language and culture had already been 
formed. I am also Polish, Scottish, English, German, Irish, 
and growing up Polish was what stood out. My dad’s father 
and four uncles were all born here, but they were raised 
speaking Polish so I was more familiar with that culture.

However there were a number of other factors that did have an impact: many 
members of Michelle’s family, including her grandparents and her mother, 
enjoyed cooking, and she picked up her initial interest from them; she had 
spent a couple of years in Lausanne, Switzerland, where she became fluent in 
French and fell in love with the language; her grandparents ran a grocery store 
for around 30 years (Lallier Food Center in Leavenworth, Kansas) and her 
father was also an entrepreneur, so she too had been looking for ways to form 
her own business. Michelle had taken one cookery class in Columbus but it 
proved to be an unsatisfactory experience and she began wondering about the 
next step. After hearing about LCB from a colleague, she explored the courses 
that the school offered. The pastry course was the one that most appealed 
partly because she has “a sweet tooth” and also because she “didn’t want to 
have to work with certain types of protein/animals for the cuisine classes.” 
She participated in her first LCB course during the summer of 2009, returned 
twice for further study, and in 2011 she received her Pastry Chef Diploma.

On Michelle’s return from her initial visit to LCB, she found she had to 
practice extensively before she was able consistently to produce pastries 
she judged adequate. Her earliest croissants “seemed heavy and didn’t 
have the lighter texture that they should, and there was so much butter 



Hopkin, Rachel. 2016. “The Way of the Croissant.” Digest: 
a Journal of Foodways and Culture 5:2: n. pag. © American Folklore Society 2017

on the baking sheet after they had baked.” She continued with a process 
of trial and error and also carried out some text-based research. In time 
she learned that “the butter wasn’t incorporated well enough through 
the dough turns and also the croissants hadn’t proofed long enough.” 

That Michelle undertook lengthy training, then worked diligently alone 
in order to reach a level of mastery that corresponded to the standards 
she had been taught—and tasted—in France, as well as those she herself 
held, indicates that she took seriously her responsibility for performing 
the croissant tradition. In addition, as her transition from banker to 
baker progressed, she had to ensure she was producing croissants that 
her Ohio audience would deem “competent” and “appropriate” at the 
very least. Throughout her efforts to meet both demands, Michelle told 
me she has always adhered to the ingredients specified in the original 
LCB croissant recipe yet has managed to exercise certain changes:

I have experimented with times to let the dough rest before/
during/after butter incorporation (lamination), proofing times, 
and baking times/temperatures. I found that longer proofing 
times (longer than what they told us at school) work better. 
Early on I used to have some problems with the croissant . . . 
sometimes toppling over when proofing and/or baking. For that 
I made the base a little longer, and it corrected the problem.

In addition, Michelle has developed a number of variations on the croissant 
theme that she regularly serves alongside the plain versions (Photo 4). She 
added almond croissants to her menu early on “because that was always my 
favorite when we ordered croissants from [the local French bakery] in high 
school.” She described how she came to introduce several other elements:

A couple of years ago I saw an episode of one of the America’s 
Test Kitchen episodes on PBS where they were making croissant 
cinnamon rolls called morning buns. I tested the filling with 
my croissant dough, and we really loved it. I started selling 
those at the farmers’ market in the summer of 2013. Over 
time I had also gotten requests for savory croissants, so last 
summer I tested some different flavors and liked best the 



Hopkin, Rachel. 2016. “The Way of the Croissant.” Digest: 
a Journal of Foodways and Culture 5:2: n. pag. © American Folklore Society 2017

combination of olive tapenade, roasted red pepper and feta. I 
started making it in the traditional croissant shape, but then 
found that it was easier to wrap up all of that filling if I used 
the pain au chocolat shape. The oranais croissants with the 
apricots and pastry cream have been a favorite of mine when I 
have travelled to Paris, and I had a customer asking about them 
last summer, so I’m hoping to experiment and add those soon.

Such activity indicates that Michelle is indeed a bricoleur in the sense that 
she can creatively and innovatively recycle a range of “materials”—materials 
in the form of her own memories, taste-preferences, and encounters with 
new ideas, combined with audience interaction and suggestions—yet 
still maintain elements of earlier croissant-making practice. She thereby 
upholds the past, shapes the future, and both creates and re-creates in 
the present the tradition of which she is both bearer and constituent. 

Photo 4. Patisserie Lallier butter croissant, May 2015. Photo: Rachel Hopkin.



Hopkin, Rachel. 2016. “The Way of the Croissant.” Digest: 
a Journal of Foodways and Culture 5:2: n. pag. © American Folklore Society 2017

The Croissant—Tradition and Modernity

During the course of our correspondence, Michelle commented to me that 
although she had much enjoyed the croissants offered by the French-style 
bakery of her high school years, their products had not been the same 
following a change in ownership of the establishment. On her last visit she 
found that “their croissants didn’t really look like croissants. I think they 
use commercially made dough.” If true, the bakery would be by no means 
alone in selling mass-produced pastries. In a 2012 article in the Daily 
Telegraph headlined “Croissants ‘dying out’ in France,” Henry Samuel 
reported that survival of the “true French croissant” was threatened by 
exponential growth in sales of “industrially made” iterations that could be 
heated up on site and sold as “home-made,” and goes on to claim that those:

. . . makers of the true French croissants complain they 
cannot compete with the lower prices of industrially made 
fare, which are sold at around 20 centimes apiece in bakery 
catalogues.10 “I make my patisseries myself but I’m losing 
money,” warned Sophie, a baker in a chic quarter of the 1st 
arrondissement [of Paris]. “It’s not on. While they haven’t 
resolved the problem of the cost of home-made croissants, 
lots of bakers will call on the industry,” she said.

“Commercially made,” “industrially-made” . . . such terms fairly 
drip with disdain for products of technology, of mechanization, 
items which come about lacking meaningful contact with the 
human hand; expressions of “modernity,” in other words. 

“Folklore is predicated on the death of tradition,” states Diarmuid Ó Giolláin 
(2000:8) in recognition of the discipline’s Romantic roots. However, in 
the 21st century, the majority of folklorists understand their subject to be 
“thoroughly embedded in modern life” (Blank and Howard 2013:1) and in a 
state of constant regeneration. Something which took place in France during 
the late 1970s serves as an illustration of how this applies to the croissant. 
At that time, the country was dealing with the onslaught of American style 
fast food which in turn prompted massive efforts to counteract the foreign 
fare (Davidson 1999:228). Part of the pushback involved the establishment 



Hopkin, Rachel. 2016. “The Way of the Croissant.” Digest: 
a Journal of Foodways and Culture 5:2: n. pag. © American Folklore Society 2017

of so-called croissanteries across the country. These new eating places 
specialized in croissants that were split open lengthwise and garnished 
“sandwich fashion, with every imaginable filling from ham to chestnut 
cream” (Davidson 1999:228). This multifaceted innovative adaptation of the 
croissant actually “strengthened the French attachment to what is considered a 
national food” (Davidson 1999:228) even though it necessitated the large scale 
commercial production of croissants which—as the Daily Telegraph article 
quoted above indicates—is now being blamed for the demise of the pastry. 

As it turns out, a thorough reading of the Telegraph article 
indicates that the situation is less dire than its grim headline 
implies since the author goes on to describe that French “makers of 
true home-made croissants” are also finding ways to adapt:

Pierre Couderc, a baker in the 19th arrondissement of Paris, has 
placed a large sign in his window that reads: “All our products 
are prepared on site. They have not been chosen from a catalogue 
and delivered frozen by the industry.” Discerning customers can 
taste the difference, the bakery’s croissant-maker-in-chief Eddy Le 
Tourrier insisted. “Our croissants are not rubbery, nor are they full 
of air. They are consistent and at the same time light, unctuous 
and crispy when they come out of the oven” (Samuel 2012).

It appears then, that even in the face of mass-produced croissants, hand-made 
croissants—and the way of the croissant more generally—will continue. 

The Croissant, Invented Traditions and Notions of Authenticity

Although those mass-produced croissants feed the hungry customers at French 
croissanteries and inspired an increased national identification with the pastry, 
are they considered authentic? And if not, then what is the measure of an 
“authentic” croissant? Historian James G. Ferguson poses this very question 
in an article entitled “Is this the Real ThingTM?” and asks if there exists an 
“undiscovered template from Plato’s bakery” or some other fail-proof means of 
establishing the standard against which all others may be judged (2006:178). 



Hopkin, Rachel. 2016. “The Way of the Croissant.” Digest: 
a Journal of Foodways and Culture 5:2: n. pag. © American Folklore Society 2017

Unable to find one, he instead offers an anecdote. A friend of his had just 
purchased a baguette from a pâtisserie in Dijon, Burgundy. On exiting:

. . . she was accosted by an older man for buying bread made in 
a machine. It wasn’t a flute from an enormous department store 
or even one from a local miniature grocery shop. It was a piece 
of French bread purchased from a Frenchman, with French 
money, at a French establishment. Apparently those conditions 
were not enough to ensure French authenticity (2006:178).

Are French bakers quoted in the Telegraph article therefore making claims of 
authenticity when they speak of their products being hand “prepared on site?”

The concept of authenticity is bound up with that of tradition because the 
latter is often wielded as a strategic means of establishing the former (Glassie 
1995:40), which has led to concerns that “authentic” folkloric traditions may 
be used as legitimizing forces to underpin particular ideologies. This issue was 
tackled in the pages of the influential edited volume The Invention of Tradition 
which set out to show that traditions, through the forging of tenuous links to 
the past, could effectively be “invented”—institutionally and otherwise—to 
serve partisan viewpoints in the present (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983).

 What are the implications of the notion of invented traditions for the 
croissant’s status within France where its popularity expanded during the 
course of the 20th century to such an exponential degree that it is now 
considered “one of the most definitively French symbols in the world” 
(Halliday 2010:xi)? It even entered the discourse when the “Gastronomic Meal 
of the French” was nominated for inclusion in UNESCO’s “Representative 
List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity,” despite the fact 
that the pastry is typically served at breakfast and, even when it is made 
into a sandwich, it still plays no role in the lengthy multi-course meal 
described in the formal nomination.11 That minor detail did not prevent 
the New York Times from publishing an article about the nomination 
which was headlined “Time to Save the Croissants” (Sciolino 2008).

Is the croissant’s traditional status within the Land of the Gauls fatally 
compromised by the persistent rumors of its roots lying elsewhere? It has 



Hopkin, Rachel. 2016. “The Way of the Croissant.” Digest: 
a Journal of Foodways and Culture 5:2: n. pag. © American Folklore Society 2017

certainly led some to mock. For example, David Halliday writes, “we have 
good news for those people who want to order a croissant without genuflecting 
to all things French or sounding like a pretentious faux-French imbecile. 
The croissant is not originally French” (2010:xii). In a similar tone, an article 
published on a website devoted to “features, advice, information and news 
about and from France” is titled “Croissants–a Great French Icon?” and its 
first line declares that “the flaky, buttery delicious crescent-shaped pastry 
called a croissant is a French icon and yet . . . it isn’t really French” (Marsh, 
n.d.). Such derision calls to mind Hugh Trevor-Roper’s pompously scathing 
(if also amusing) excavation of the genesis and evolution of the Scottish 
kilt, which he variously locates in almost any place but Scotland (1983). 

If the authenticity of the croissant is doubted because it may have 
originated outside of France, its potential precursor may be tarred with a 
similar brush. After all, the Kipfel/Kipferl/Hörnchen complies with many 
of the facets of “invented tradition” as set out by Eric Hobsbawm in his 
introduction to The Invention of Tradition. It was, after all, constructed in 
response to an official command, then more or less “formally instituted” 
as a culinary vehicle through which the rulers of Vienna (or Budapest) 
could mark, celebrate, commemorate, and generally prolong the afterglow 
of their triumph over their Ottoman enemies, thereby allowing them a 
means of maintaining “continuity with a suitable historic past” (1983:1). 

Overall The Invention of Tradition regarded invented traditions in a poor 
light, with its contributors associating the concept with malfeasance, 
manipulation, subterfuge, deception, and ignorance. However, a year after 
its publication, anthropologists Richard Handler and Jocelyn Linnekin 
responded by asserting that all traditions are inventions. Their argument, 
simply put, is that traditions are neither genuine nor spurious but exist 
only in our interpretations of them. An invented tradition therefore is not 
an anomaly but the rule since “to do something because it is traditional is 
already to reinterpret and hence to change it” (1984:281). As a result, the value 
of a tradition “does not depend upon an objective relationship to the past” 
and “the origin of cultural practices is largely irrelevant to the experience 
of tradition; authenticity is always defined in the present” (1984:286). 



Hopkin, Rachel. 2016. “The Way of the Croissant.” Digest: 
a Journal of Foodways and Culture 5:2: n. pag. © American Folklore Society 2017

On that basis, it would seem that—regardless of whether the 
croissant’s roots lie in Sumer, Ancient Greece, Austria, Hungary, 
or anywhere else—if French bakers and consumers find value 
in interpreting the croissant as being an authentic symbol 
of their country’s heritage, culture, and cuisine, as well as 
meaningful in their formation of their own identities in their 
act of making, displaying, eating, or digesting it, then so it is.

The Croissant and Traditionalization

The idea that tradition, as spelled out by Handler and Linnekin, 
is essentially a matter of interpretation in the present, albeit 
connected to some form of reference to the past, is not unlike 
Dell Hymes’ concept of “traditionalization,” namely that the 
historical antecedents of a given tradition are not so important 
as its place in social life. According to Hymes, we all make 
efforts to “traditionalize” aspects of our experience:

In a given case, the namings of situations that 
recur, the ritual arrangements that are recreated, 
may be idiosyncratic. But the traditional begins 
with the personal. Its distribution in history, 
in a community, is important, but secondary, 
not defining. Something partakes of the nature 
of the traditional already when the effort to 
traditionalize has brought it into being. For that 
one or few, it answers to the notion. (1975:354)

That explanation gives me, I hope, license to offer my 
own personal and idiosyncratic eating of croissants 
as an instance of traditionalization in action. 

In the introduction to this paper, I explained how I enjoyed 
many family holidays in France as a child and my memories of 
those times are almost uniformly idyllic. The significance of the 



Hopkin, Rachel. 2016. “The Way of the Croissant.” Digest: 
a Journal of Foodways and Culture 5:2: n. pag. © American Folklore Society 2017

country for me lies in its being the location of that early happiness 
even though it later became one of the seven countries, spread 
over three continents, in which I have lived during my adult life. 
I seem to have been almost addicted to inhabiting new places, 
finding somewhere new to explore every 18 months or so on 
average. Between 2010 and 2012, I was in Kentucky and studying 
for a Masters in Folklore at Western Kentucky University. There, 
as I learned about the nature of tradition and traditionalization, I 
realized my fragmented and multi-sited existence, while exciting 
and stimulating, had been a poor proving ground for nurturing 
and maintaining traditions of my own. I was almost always far 
from my family and although I like to think I am reasonably good 
at making friends, inevitably those who were physically closest to 
me in any given base were also the ones of most recent standing.

Between Kentucky and my current home of Columbus, Ohio, I 
lived in Las Vegas, Nevada. I moved there for a job, arrived ten 
days before its official start date, and spent the time exploring 
the city and its environs. One of my stops was at the Bellagio 
Hotel on the Strip where my attention was caught by its Palio 
Café. For some reason, it triggered memories of French eateries 
in Menton, a town on the Mediterranean coastline which my 
family had visited during three summers. (I later discovered 
that the Bellagio was designed to give visitors the illusion 
they are at Italy’s Lake Como, which is not so very far from 
Menton.) I went back the following day specifically to enjoy a 
croissant breakfast like those I would have eaten as a child—
although the Palio croissant had the dimensions of a full-grown 
hedgehog and therefore was several times the size of the ones I 
remembered from France. I enjoyed the meal and the illusion 
the place evoked of being on the Riviera. On leaving, I decided 
to visit the Bellagio’s small art gallery, where an exhibit of 
works by Monet was on show. To my delight I found that one of 
the paintings depicted a panorama of Menton! The next day, I 
went hiking on Mount Charleston, which is about 45 minutes 
to the northwest of Vegas, where memories of the Riviera once 



Hopkin, Rachel. 2016. “The Way of the Croissant.” Digest: 
a Journal of Foodways and Culture 5:2: n. pag. © American Folklore Society 2017

again overwhelmed me—the topography and the flora were so 
similar to those of the mountains behind the French town.

When I moved to Nevada I had hoped it would be for more 
than 18 months, and even that I could set a new precedent by 
building a home there in the deep sense of the word. Perhaps 
then, it was a combination of the family memories—which 
happened to be tied to France and were stoked by certain 
encounters in this new city—along with my recently acquired 
folkloristic knowledge, that led me to traditionalize my 
croissant-consumption. It also helped, of course, that I find 
the pastry—at least when well performed—utterly delicious!

I returned to Palio many times, then started to visit a few 
other cafes around town. Over time, I began to make it 
a conscious activity to seek out new croissants to try for 
breakfast. I soon found I was sampling so many iterations, 
I needed to record my observations and so began to talk 
about my “Quest for the Best Croissant in the West.” I also 
made efforts to find croissants whenever I traveled. When I 
moved to Ohio to start my Ph.D., my endeavor transmuted 
into the “Quest for the Best Croissant in the Midwest.”

Tom Mould offered a reassessment of traditionalization in 
2005, perceiving it as a conscious process in which performers 
draw on items they deem traditional within an interpretive 
framework that allows them to construct “a conservative 
dialogue against the modern” (289). But this is not the purpose 
it serves for me. I don’t traditionalize my croissant-eating to 
critique modernity. Nor do I want to revisit even the nicest 
parts of my childhood. However, in drawing on resources 
available to me now but influenced by my memories and 
tastes, I have found a practice that requires no hard work 
(bar the pain experienced when I encounter a disappointing 
croissant), which enhances my inhabitation of the present 
and literally enables me to savor my experience of life.



Hopkin, Rachel. 2016. “The Way of the Croissant.” Digest: 
a Journal of Foodways and Culture 5:2: n. pag. © American Folklore Society 2017

Other than eating croissants, my traditionalization involves 
other components. They include: researching new sources; 
introducing friends and dear ones to “croissants I have loved” 
(Photo 5); communicating with purveyors about their ideas 
vis-à-vis good croissants; throwing parties where croissants 
are served; giving croissant-themed gifts (Photo 6); writing this 
paper even. My croissant traditionalization is transportable, 
often delicious, and a lot of fun. It is also strangely meaningful 
and I imagine this is because, to paraphrase Henry Glassie on 
the subject of authenticity, my “individual commitment” to my 
croissant quest brings with it “social association” (1995:401).

Photo 5. Folklorist Martha Sims with croissant 
from Salt Lake City’s Tulie Bakery, visited on author’s 
recommendation, 2015. Photo: Brian Lovely.



Hopkin, Rachel. 2016. “The Way of the Croissant.” Digest: 
a Journal of Foodways and Culture 5:2: n. pag. © American Folklore Society 2017

Photo 6. M.J., Jr., son of folklorist Sheila Bock and 
historian Michael J. Alarid, with croissant rattle author 
sent as a gift. October 2015. Photo: Sheila Bock.

As for the croissant’s continuing traditional evolution—based 
on its history I can only imagine that more variations, more 
hybrids, and more pushbacks of a conservative nature lie 
ahead. I would certainly love to see more scholarship on its 
history. As for me, it’s not inconceivable that at some point in 
the future, I may decide to seek out scones or brioches. But 
even if that does happen, I suspect it will only be a matter 
of time before I return to “the way of the croissant.” 



Hopkin, Rachel. 2016. “The Way of the Croissant.” Digest: 
a Journal of Foodways and Culture 5:2: n. pag. © American Folklore Society 2017

Notes

(1) I thank Jasmine Stork, whose turn of phrase in a 
different context inspired the title of this paper.

(2) In the cited 2009 paper, Noyes argues for an additional 
mode to the three mentioned in the body of my paper, 
namely “the transfer of responsibility for a valued practice 
or performance” (233). In a synthetic 1984 article, Ben-
Amos outlined seven ways in which folklorists have used 
the term “tradition”–lore, canon, process, mass, culture, 
langue, and performance. Oring has since argued that six 
of these (i.e. all but process) relate to product (2013:24). 

(3) Margarine was invented by Frenchman Mège Mouriès in 1869 
in response to a competition organized by the Emperor Napoleon 
III. At that time, the Franco-Prussian war was underway, butter 
was scarce and expensive, and the goal of the competition 
was to find a cheaper substitute (Davidson 1999:478).

(4) Laminated doughs are formed by blending the basic 
ingredients with only a small proportion of the fat. The 
resulting mixture is then rolled out and the remaining 
fat is spread over the top. The fat is then incorporated by 
successive foldings and rollings out of the dough, a process 
which produces the characteristic laminated dough layers.

(5) When margarine first appeared (see note 3), it was an 
instant commercial success but also provoked widespread 
disdain as a “cheaper and inferior substitute” for butter 
(Davidson 1999:478). Croissants made with margarine are 
generally considered to be inferior to pur beurre iterations.

(6) Trager adds that “some historians say that the bakers 
produced the kipfel in anticipation of a Turkish victory” 
as opposed to celebrating their defeat (1995:140).



Hopkin, Rachel. 2016. “The Way of the Croissant.” Digest: 
a Journal of Foodways and Culture 5:2: n. pag. © American Folklore Society 2017

(7) Davidson attributes the dissemination of these croissant 
origin “myths” to Alfred Gottschalk who gave the Budapest 
story in his entry for the croissant in the 1938 first edition of 
Larousse Gastronomique and then offered the Vienna version 
in his own later and single-authored history of food. Aside 
from “The Origins of the Croissant,” The Oxford Companion 
to Food’s “Culinary Mythology” section contains five other so-
called myths, including “Effect of Searing Meat” (apparently, 
contrary to popular understandings, searing meat does not 
seal in the juices) and “Marco Polo’s Supposed Introduction 
of Pasta from China to the Western World” (documentary 
evidence indicates pasta was being served in Italy prior to 1295 
which was when Marco Polo returned from the Far East).

(8) The quoted description of Chevallier comes from 
his page at academia.edu, accessed on 4/18/2015 via 
https://independent.academia.edu/JimChevallier.

(9) Examining other figures who helped further the croissant’s 
status as an internationally-enjoyed pastry lies beyond 
the scope of this paper. However, future research might 
examine potential “passive tradition bearers” such as Charles 
Dickens and Henry James, since both referred to the item 
in their writings. James described croissants as “so softly-
crusty crescent rolls” in his 1913 autobiography A Small 
Boy and Others (as quoted in Chevallier 2009:53), whilst 
Dickens mentioned their having become staples in Parisian 
cafes by 1865 (Halliday 2010:107) and later wrote of “the 
dainty croissant on the boudoir table” (Dickens 1872:61). 

(10) Twenty centimes is approximately 
the equivalent of 20 U.S. cents.

(11) The “Gastronomic meal of the French” was inscribed on 
UNESCO’s “Representative List of the Intangible Cultural 
Heritage of Humanity” in 2010. According to the UNESCO 
website, the meal consists of a “fixed structure, commencing with 



Hopkin, Rachel. 2016. “The Way of the Croissant.” Digest: 
a Journal of Foodways and Culture 5:2: n. pag. © American Folklore Society 2017

an apéritif (drinks before the meal) and ending with liqueurs, 
containing in between at least four successive courses, namely 
a starter, fish and/or meat with vegetables, cheese and dessert.” 
(See http://www.unesco.org/culture/ich/en/RL/gastronomic-
meal-of-the-french-00437, accessed January 5, 2017)

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