It is one of France’s most fabled delicacies, a flaky, crescent-shaped and feather-light indulgence first imported – legend has it – from Vienna, and as pleasurable in the mouth as it is ruinous for the waistline. But the croissant, along with its equally appetising relative the pain au chocolat and other iconic French pastries such as the brioche, is at risk from an unprecedented shortage of its principle ingredient: butter, , reports The Guardian.
“Last April, we were paying 2,500 euros a tonne,” said Matthieu Labbé of the baking industry body FEB. “Now it’s 5,300 euros. At best, consumers are going to have to pay more. At worst, we may no longer be able to get butter.”
A nationwide pastry penury is possible, said Fabien Castanier of the federation of French biscuit and cake-makers. “The industry is under unsustainable pressure,” he said. “And it’s going to get worse. There’s a real risk of butter running out.”
Although shrouded in layers of legend, historians agree the croissant was inspired by the Austrian kipfel or Hörnchen, a crescent-shaped cake supposedly created to celebrate the vital role of Vienna’s bakers in defeating the 1683 siege of the city by the Ottomans.
Up early to start baking their bread, the bakers are said to have heard the Turkish soldiers tunnelling under the city and alerted the authorities. Inconveniently for this story, however, crescent-shaped breads and cakes existed in Austria and elsewhere centuries earlier.
Another much-repeated story recounts that Marie-Antoinette, nostalgic for the flavours of her native Vienna, was responsible for introducing the croissant to France in the 1770s – but that, too, is belied by the fact that the first French reference to the iconic pastry does not appear until the 1840s.
What is certain is that the innovation that ensured the croissant’s success – possibly pioneered by an Austrian-born baker called August Zang at his patisserie in the rue Richelieu in central Paris at about that time – was to use puff pastry. From then on, the delicacy took off, rapidly becoming a breakfast staple.