How to Eat a Croissant

Our neighborhood bakery makes this legendary almond chocolate croissant. It is so legendary that it took me five visits to finally snap one before it ran out for the day.

As the special treat sat on my kitchen counter, a question loomed over my head. Would warming it up make it taste better, and if so, how long and at what temperature? Or just having it straight because that's how they were served? I didn't want to mess the legend up. 

How To Eat

A Croissant

A quick search online showed mixed results, and none was specific to THIS almond chocolate croissant. So I launched this question at friends who are from or once lived in France. But it was 9am on a Saturday, and the message status remained "delivered", not "read".

The croissant was getting stale by the second. My desire to get it right succumbed to my curiosity to try it out. I cut the croissant in half and tossed half of it in the toaster oven, and toasted it the way I toasted my bread.

The A/B testing showed that heating it up was a winner for me. The melting and firming of the butter made the croissant more crispy. And the almond paste and the chocolate filling became gooey and warm. The mouthfeel was much appealing than biting into a more solid texture of the unheated version which felt like a candy bar. There would be more to finetune, such as the temperature and time in the oven, but the croissant lived to my hope and kicked me off to a cheerful start to the long weekend.

It only occurred to me after the fact that it was pretty silly to agonize over a croissant. How could one mess it up when food adventure includes trial and error. And, even IF I mess it up, getting another croissant would not be that much of a big deal.

In life, few things leave an irreversible impact, and these require scrutiny. For the rest, it's more fun to go ahead and experiment.