[2] It is a buttery, flaky, viennoiserie pastry inspired by the shape of the Austrian kipferl, but using the French yeast-leavened laminated dough.

[5] 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.

[10] In either 1838 or 1839, an Austrian artillery officer, August Zang, founded a Viennese bakery ("Boulangerie Viennoise") at 92, rue de Richelieu in Paris.

[16] By 1869, the croissant was well established enough to be mentioned as a breakfast staple,[17] and in 1872, Charles Dickens wrote (in his periodical All the Year Round) of "the workman's pain de ménage and the soldier's pain de munition, to the dainty croissant on the boudoir table"[18] The puff pastry technique that now characterizes the croissant was already mentioned in the late 17th century, when La Varenne's Le Cuisinier françois gave a recipe for it in the 1680 – and possibly earlier – edition.

The first recipe corresponding to the modern croissant, not only for the shape but also the texture of the dough and the taste, was published in 1906, in Paris, in Colombié's Nouvelle Encyclopédie culinaire.

[citation needed] Stories of how the kipferl — sometimes confused with the croissant — was created are widespread and persistent culinary legends, going back to the 19th century.

[22] However, there are no contemporary sources for any of these stories, and an aristocratic writer, writing in 1799, does not mention the kipferl in a long and extensive list of breakfast foods.

[23] The legends include tales that it was invented in Europe to celebrate the defeat of the Umayyad forces by the Franks at the Battle of Tours in 732, with the shape representing the Islamic crescent; that it was invented in Buda; or, according to other sources, in Vienna in 1683 to celebrate the defeat of the Ottomans by Christian forces in the siege of the city, as a reference to the crescents on the Ottoman flags, when bakers staying up all night heard the tunneling operation and gave the alarm.

[22][24] The Islamic origin story seems to have originated with the 20th-century writer Alfred Gottschalk, who gave two versions:[25] According to one of a group of similar legends, which vary only in detail, a baker of the 17th century, working through the night at a time when his city (either Vienna in 1683 or Budapest in 1686) was under siege by the Turks, heard faint underground rumbling sounds which, on investigation, proved to be caused by a Turkish attempt to invade the city by tunneling under the walls.

The baker asked no reward other than the exclusive right to bake crescent-shaped pastries commemorating the incident, the crescent being the symbol of Islam.

He was duly rewarded in this way, and the croissant was born.The story seems to owe its origin, or at least its wide diffusion, to Alfred Gottschalk, who wrote about the croissant for the first edition of the Larousse Gastronomique (1938) and there gave the legend in the 'Turkish attack on Budapest in 1686' version; but who subsequently, in his own book (1948) on the history of food, opted for the 'siege of Vienna in 1683' version.

[27] Uncooked croissant dough can also be wrapped around any praline, almond paste, or chocolate before it is baked (in the last case, it becomes like pain au chocolat, which has a different, non-crescent, shape), or sliced to include sweet or savoury fillings.

These variants are often considered to be the same, but that is not completely true: the French version tends to be crispy, whereas an Italian cornetto or brioche is usually softer.

'empty cornetto') is commonly accompanied by variants with filling, which include crema pasticciera (custard), apricot jam or chocolate cream.

[citation needed] On 11 November, St. Martin's Day is celebrated in the Polish region of Greater Poland, mainly in its capital city Poznań.

On this day, the people of Poznań purchase and eat considerable amounts of sweet, crescent-shaped pastries called rogale świętomarcińskie ("St. Martin's croissants").

They are made specially for this occasion from puff pastry filled with ground white poppy seeds, almonds, raisins, and nuts.

[citation needed] Besides the regular croissant, a variation called Xuixos (pronounced [ʃuʃu])[28] is sold.

To prepare predough, flour, water, in-dough fat, yeast, salt, and sugar are mixed together in a single step.

In the deformation or kneading stage, the action of mixing causes the gluten to undergo a series of polymerization and depolymerization reactions, forming a viscoelastic network.

As such, the most important function of roll-in fat is to form and maintain a barrier between the different dough layers during sheeting and folding.

[37] While butter is appealing due to its high consumer acceptance, its low melting point, 32 °C (90 °F), actually makes it undesirable for production purposes.

The use of butter as roll-in fat during the lamination step will cause problems of oiling out during sheeting and fermentation if the temperature is not tightly controlled, thus disrupting the integrity of the layers.

Generally, roll-in margarine should have a melting point between 40 and 44 °C (104 and 111 °F), at least 3 °C (37 °F) higher than the fermentation temperature to prevent oiling out prior to baking.

[31] Yeast action does not produce new gas cells, as the immense pressure required for a single CO2 molecule to create a new gas bubble is not physically attainable[40] In order to ensure the flaky texture of the croissant, it is important to balance the yeast activity with steam production.

[38] During the baking process, this would cause steam to escape too early from the bread, reducing dough lift and flakiness of the final product.

As the fat melts, the continuous oil phase is no longer able to stabilize the water droplets, which are then released and converted to steam.

[45] The result of this redistribution of water is a firming up of the croissant, caused by a decrease in starch plasticity and an increase in gluten network rigidity.

Due to the presence of large pores in croissants, moisture is lost to the environment at a faster rate than bread products.

On one hand, an increased amount of in-dough fat has been found to correspond to a reduction in crumb hardness immediately after baking.