THE flat croissants they are flat, colourful, very sweet and crunchy croissants, the complete opposite of an airy and soft traditional croissant, empty and even without sugar. I’m the opposite, but it’s the way we could save brioche from being wasted and from being a very poorly paid job. It takes at least 48 hours to make a croissant. In fact, it is necessary to let it rise, to incorporate the butter into the flour, to let it rise again to have a final alveolation and – as the classic recipe dictates – 27 exact layers. Very thin, airy, separated as much as possible as a perfectly made pastry would require. A lot of work and a huge quantity of a precious ingredient like butter which is the true test of a pastry shop, yet it is a product that is often sold almost below cost – we talked about it with Davide Longoni, advocate of a whole new generation of bakers Italians. Because in the perception of us customers, the “brioche at the bar” is a quick breakfast, which we are used to paying just over a euro. It matters little that those are defrosted and based on low quality margarine, they have “imposed” a reference price from which it is difficult to distance oneself, even in an expensive city like Milan. So how to do it? Offer other products, or enhance the croissant in an alternative way, perhaps giving it an original, unique shape (at least for a while), which creates hype.
Cronuts, cruffins, rolls and cubes
In 2013 it was the cronuts, a chimera that merged croissants and donuts, and the cruffins, a portmanteau between croissants and muffins, that were talked about all over the world. Ten years later it was the turn of roll-shaped croissants, which landed in the international news from New York, quickly followed by cube-shaped ones. The Roll Croissants or Suprême were invented by pastry chef Scott Cloe of La Fayette Bakery in New York, the Crubik instead by a Swedish pastry chef, Bedros Kabranian made viral thanks to a first replica in London and in Italy by the Farmacia del Cambio of Turin. Talking about new things makes you smile, now you can find them from Salento to Valle d’Aosta: from then to today social networks have changed, everything flows faster, fashions, pastry chefs who emulate other people’s creations and the industry, which travels very fast. Within a year of their social success, rolls and cubes were already sold in frozen and ready-to-cook versions by various companies at sector fairs such as Sigep in Rimini.
The trends that serve to sell
«The idea of the cubic or spherical croissant was launched mostly by those who produce the baking molds to make them thundered Iginio Massari during an interview with Alfredo, the food branch of Rolling Stones. Absolutely true, just as the pistachio trend was made possible by importers and producers of preparations, square panettone are the invention of the market leader in the field of baking shapes and so on. In the consumer society there is always someone who wants to sell you something. Manufacturers of moulds, ingredients and frozen brioches who teach how to use their frozen croissants to make them into cubes (cutting them in two and inserting them into the mold by reversing the tips and then closing the lid – in case someone wants to make them by hand but with ready-made products…). Now that we all know how to make them, pastry shops have already started working to create the next trend, and it’s called flat croissant, it comes from South Korea, where in 2023 it literally invaded TikTok.
What is the flat croissant
The flat croissant is a flat croissant. You can take a normal, baked, good or poor quality croissant of your choice, flatten it with a rolling pin, brush it with butter and sugar, griddle it or bake it between two baking trays. Or you can make the pastry, take 48 hours, roll up the croissant and then bake it between two baking trays, eliminating the leavening effect. It can be a recycled recipe, invented to resell the unsold croissants the next day, or a useless waste of time, the result is that after having dipped it in chocolate or another covering, you can sell it for three times more than a classic croissant . It could be the usual media meteor, or a good idea to not waste, in a sexy way. In fact, it would not be the first recycled recipe to be tastier than the original raw material.
Creative recycling of croissants around the world
There are different ways to recycle leftover croissants. Casseroles in the oven after having dipped them in milk and eggs, there are those who cook them again in the waffle iron, in Spain they call them Croissants a la Plancha, brioche from the day before opened in two and fried in butter on both sides, served with butter and jam. In France they are a classic Almond Croissant which are opened in two, filled with almond paste, brushed with butter and flaked almonds and baked. In Copenhagen, with the side cuts of the dough for croissants, the very famous pastry chef Richard Hart (who made his name as head baker at the legendary Tartine Bakery in San Francisco) at his Hart Bageri began to propose the Cardamom Croissant, originally made with leftover croissant dough and lots of butter and cardamom sugar. It has become the most requested item and so now it is produced from scratch, although flat croissants would have ended a little anyway.
