A croissant is a buttery, flaky, French viennoiserie pastry inspired by
the shape of the Austrian kipferl but using the French yeast-leavened
laminated dough. Croissants are named for their historical crescent
shape, the dough is layered with butter, rolled and folded several times
in succession, then rolled into a thin sheet, in a technique called
laminating. The process results in a layered, flaky texture, similar to
a puff pastry.
Crescent-shaped breads have been made since the Renaissance, and
crescent-shaped cakes possibly since antiquity but using brioche dough.
Kipferls have long been a staple of Austrian, and French bakeries and
pĆ¢tisseries. The modern croissant was developed in the early 20th
century when French bakers replaced the brioche dough of the kipferl
with a yeast-leavened laminated dough. 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.