The croissant is the undisputed symbol of French cafe culture, yet it descends from the kipferl, a dense crescent-shaped bread eaten in Austria since the 13th century. This episode follows its arrival in Paris around 1838, when Austrian artillery officer August Zang opened the Boulangerie Viennoise and introduced the concept of Viennoiserie, and explains why the flaky laminated version we know today did not appear in the record until Sylvain Claudius Goy's recipe around 1915.

It also takes apart the persistent legend that the crescent shape celebrates a Christian victory over Islamic armies, tracing that story to writer Alfred Gottschalk in 1938 and its real-world consequence when the Islamic State tried to ban croissants in Syria. The second half turns to the physics of the pastry itself: cold-dough gluten control, lamination that produces ...