Chocolate Croissants!

Who knows how it started, but it definitely began. Somewhere along the way chocolate croissants became a part of my identity. As a staple in bakeries, I must not be the only one. I don't know if that's a consolation? I really would like to go back to my formative pre-7-year-old days and count how many times my mother brought me to the bakery, with me as an excuse (who can say? :) ), when the chocolate croissant situation started via a weekly (or bi-daily) titration of butter, filo dough and chocolate. As a young adult and as a growing-older one, it's become a routine to sample cafes', bakeries', boulangeries', etc. chocolate croissants of any area I happen to land, if even for a little while. Honestly, it is not just an excuse to eat multiple chocolate croissants day in and day out. I swear.

Paris! And your chocolatines! How disappointed I was. The birthplace (I assume(d)) of the chocolate croissant. I sampled them everywhere, all over the city. Near Notre Dame, Sacre Coeur, Museo de Picasso, Latin Quartier? Nothing.

There've been many heartbreaks.

Having recently moved to the East Bay, I continued my sampling. It's unconscious, I swear. For the first time, however, I made the tasting systematic by recruiting some people (analysts).

Here's the deal. A research program was designed loosely after another, albeit plain, croissant-off; the top four bakeries in the eastern north-Oakland/Berkeley area were sampled: La Farine, Market Hall Bakery, Masse's Pastries and Semifreddi's. La Farine, Market Hall and Semifreddi's were somewhat in-the-know spots for the analysts before the test, but Masse's Pastries in north Berkeley was off the radar. In the croissant-off linked above, Masse's wins, and after reading some of the comments I thought they might dazzle on the chocolate croissant frontier, too. While I was at Masse's Pastries, the last bakery on my chocolate croissant run on the day of the analysis, I asked the baker why chocolate croissants are rarely made into real croissant shapes. It's rare, as you probably know, to see an actual chocolate croissant (croissant, from the French: "crescent"); typically, its representation is a folded-over mess with chocolate stuffed inside. One bakery around the corner from where I work in Berkeley simply makes a flat bread roll and stuffs chocolate in to it (to be fair, it's called a "pain au chocolate" - but what's the point of that?. Needless to say, they were not included in the croissant-off). The baker at Masse's said that it's simply easier to make the folded-over version because the chocolate for chocolate most often comes in sticks of a length convenient for folding in - it's a little more, or a lot more, complicated to croissant them in.

-- interlude --

On a Mexico trip, I found a great bakery in Barre de Navidad, Jalisco, run by a French-Canadian (if I remember correctly) and his wife. They got up everyday at 3:30 a.m. to make the day's croissants - plain, almond and chocolate - all about half the size of regular croissants. I got up early one morning to bake with them, and while the husband lamented, sadly, that his parents would not visit or respect him because they thought he was on vacation and not really working in Mexico (though he was!), we talked about and made croissants. To get the traditional form, the filo dough is buttered and cut into triangles, and the triangles are then, surpringly, simply rolled up from one point to make the characteristic, texture-laden croissant shape. I learned something important that enlightned much of my croissant experience, too: many bakeries don't use butter, but margarine, because it's much easier to work with, but a lot less tasty. Isn't it the blending of butter and chocolate and flaky dough that make choclate croissants great?!

-- back to the contest --

Two croissants were purchased from each bakery and then cut up into two or three pieces with the ends removed and then placed on four plates. The five reviewers had no idea which croissant came from which bakery.

-- a note --

I had been blown away by Market Hall Bakery's chocolate croissants - buttery, chocolate-y and flaky. A rare combination. And, they dame in completely off the map; no blogs or food sites mentioned them in the little research I did for the taste-off.

-- back to the contest --

The results (listed in order of favorite):

Analyst K: La Farine, Masse's Pastries, Semifreddi's, Market Hall
Analyst M: La Farine, Market Hall, Masse's Pastries, Semifreddi's
Analyst N: Market Hall, La Farine, Semifreddi's, Masse's Pastries
Analyst Ra: La Farine, Masse's Pastries, Market Hall, Semifreddi's
Analyst Re: Market Hall, La Farine, Masse's Pastries, Semifreddi's

Obviously, La Farine won, but Market Hall is clearly the second favorite. After tasting both one after the other, and vice-versa, it was clear that they were very similar but differed in the taste of their chocolate. La Farine's was less sweet, mor dark; Market Hall's more milk-buttery. Surprisingly, the heavily touted Masse's Pastries didn't do so well. Maybe an off day.

Regardless - a very one one for a chocolate-croissant addict!