Celebrate Bastille Day with a croissant and a café au lait
Bonne Fête! Today is Bastille Day, France’s national day. Celebrate the day with a croissant and a café au lait for breakfast – read on to find out more.
Bastille Day commemorates the storming of the Bastille on 14 July 1789 at the beginning of the French Revolution. We can all be a little bit French today with a delicious buttery croissant and a café au lait (the closest you’ll get is a cafe latte in our Italian-oriented café scene here in Australia!). And you don’t need to go all the way to France to celebrate one of the greatest gifts the French have bestowed upon the world.
We are so lucky to be supplied by Pigeon Whole Bakers, whose croissants won first place in Delicious magazine’s Delicious 100 Awards in October 2023 as the state’s very best croissants. So just why are they so good?
Founder Jay Patey says that a lot of magic has to happen to turn flour, yeast and butter into those golden, flaky crescents of goodness. The secrets of Pigeon Whole Bakers’ croissants lie with premium raw ingredients, decades of experience across a top-notch pastry team, and, says Jay, “a whole lotta love!”.
Croissants first made their appearance in around 1838 as a variation of the Austrian crescent-shaped pastry, the Kipferl. Austrian August Zang, the founder of the famed Boulangerie Viennoise in Paris, baked ‘Viennese-style’ pastries which quickly became popular – and the French version of the Kipferl, the croissant, named for its crescent shape, the most universally known and loved.
The puff pastry technique of the modern croissant already existed in the late 17th century and the first recipe for what is today recognised as a croissant was published in 1906 in Colombié’s Nouvelle Encyclopédie culinaire.
And just what makes a perfect croissant? A lot of flaky, buttery layers! These are achieved by a pastry technique called lamination – the process of folding and rolling butter into the dough over and over again to create extremely thin layers. When cooked, these layers expand to create the famous honeycomb structure of the interior of the croissant and the flaky exterior.
Visit any of our stores today and you too can enjoy all the buttery goodness.
Vive la France!
Pigeon Whole Bakers croissants are stocked by most of our stores, please check with your local Hill Street for availability. They come in plain (extra-large size) as well as chocolate and almond. We also stock Pigeon Whole Bakers Morning Buns which are a round bun made with croissant pastry favoured with cinnamon, cardamom and honey.
