It is said that the first croissant was born in Austria in 1683, to celebrate the end of the Ottoman siege of Vienna. Two versions of the same story have coexisted since...
The first: when the enemy was about to attack at dawn, Viennese bakers raised the alarm: as a souvenir, they created a Hörnchen (small horn in German), whose shape resembles the Ottoman flag's symbol.
Second possibility: the cleverness of a young Polish nobleman saves Vienna and leads to the creation of the famous croissant. Franz Georg Kolschitzky had lived in Constantinople, so he spoke Turkish: he crossed enemy lines disguised as an Ottoman and provided valuable information about Turkish positions to the army of Charles of Lorraine, which was supposed to rescue the city.
In appreciation of his bravery, Kolschitzky became Austrian, obtained authorization to open a coffeehouse, and, above all, recovered the 500 sacks of coffee abandoned by the defeated Ottoman army. Without inspiration or commercial sense, he improved his coffee recipe by adding a bit of honey and cream (which became the famous Viennese coffee), and served it with puff pastry in the shape of a croissant.
But for the French, the croissant is even older: at a banquet served at the French court in 1549, "40 pastries in the shape of a crescent" were already mentioned. Croissants that commemorate the alliance from a few years earlier between Francis I and Suleiman the Magnificent... The truth is that it was Marie Antoinette of Austria who, upon marrying Louis XVI, truly launched the croissant trend in France.
But it wasn't until the mid-20th century that the croissant became one of the culinary symbols... of France!
