Adventures with Croissant

I remember my last foray abroad, I remember noting the quality of food (or lack there of) that humans would consume merely because they were trapped in an enclosed space – on a train or an overnight flight – and it was the only thing edible offered to them. One leg of that trip saw me on a train from London to Paris, where I was treated to what I thought would stand as the worst croissant I'd ever consume.

This is not meant as the definitive essay on the croissant, but rather the next disturbing chapter in my adventures with this usually, delightful pastry.

I now find myself on an overnight flight en route to San Salvador – the first leg of my journey to Buenos Aires – and as the sunrise paints a dark orange band along the eastern horizon to the left of the plane I am presented with what I can only describe as a baked good wrapped in plastic with the label “croissant.” Now for any of you who've been to France or the Tartine bakery in San Francisco you know some of the best form and flavor a croissant has to offer. What I now hold in my hand, I am sure, even before peeling back the wrapping, is sheer blasphemy by comparison. I am simply astounded at the notion that someone thought fit to label what I now hold in my hands as a "croissant."

I had thought that the British version of the croissant – which I dutifully tried on the train from London to Paris – was bad. I remember naively thinking “how bad can it be? I'm on my WAY to France. Surely they pick them up there - they wouldn't think to try to make them here.” I literally had to eat my words, when the thing I was served was more like a mere bun - shaped to vaguely resemble a croissant.

I am hoping that much like the British croissant foreshadowed the excellence that would follow my arrival in Paris - this experience will bring me the same and I will find pastry that in Buenos Aires that rivals old world quality I've tasted before, but this in my hand – well in short it is both an atrocity and a curiosity.

There are people somewhere that actually try to make a croissant and it turns out like this? What are they playing at? It looks strangely like a croissant- seeming oddly pressed in to that shape as if there was a mold in a factory somewhere that stamps the dough into their best approximation of what a croissant should be. Upon opening the package I notice there are little bits of layered dough on top that seem to defy my theory of the molded croissant, but ultimately bely what's inside.

I dutifully eat it – in part because I'm starving and it seems vaguely edible – in part because it and the jam are the only things I've been given – and well, because like I mentioned previously that bit about eating whatever you're given when trapped in an enclosed space travelling somewhere...and it was there...but please, not in the way people seek out mountains to climb. It is light, fluffy and homogeneous inside, much like a cheap dinner roll – except strangely as if it had been left out from the holiday dinner the night before – oddly stale and dry. I doubt I'd think anything of it if the package had been labelled stale dinner roll.

I'm not usually one to be so picky (ok, sometimes I am!), but seriously – don't the french have some rules about what gets to be called a croissant and what doesn't? And if they don't – well, for travellers the world over I kinda wish someone would start. I know silly idea when we have war and poverty in the world, but come on, we have the FDA, couldn't they save the world for proper croissant eating by having the FCA (French Croissant Administration)?

Alas – I hope to meet nicer more croissant-y croissants when I arrive at my destination.