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That’s not a French Bakery – that’s a chain. They probably don’t do them right, either. This was a small independent place that is now gone.
I guarantee that Burger King doesn’t make proper croissants, either.
October, 1980 - Pasadena, CA - Cafeteria of Bank of America Credit Card Center
Prior to that I had much experience with Pillsbury “Crescent Rolls”.
It is now, but at the time it was a chain of two. I remember a couple of years later the owner excitedly telling me that he was about to open a third store.
When I was a petit garcon we visited Paris. I was 7 or 8. For breakfast in the hotel we had fresh croissants. Even now when I eat a fresh croissant I have vivid memories of Paris. Croissants have become a more mundane, common food here in the interim but they still have that effect on my memory the odd time I eat them. To be honest, I have no recollection before that whether croissants were easy to find here, just Paris was the first time I became aware of them.
Mild hijack here - just like Leaffan, I grew up in Canada, and just like Leaffan, I’ve never not known what croissants are. But with the French pronunciation. So I look at Croissan’wich and I see “cwa-sohn-wich”. It was only a few years ago I began to think that perhaps that’s not right - there’s a sandwich pun in there, correct? But I’ve only ever seen print adverts and billboards so I don’t know.
So I guess my question is, in the US, is it pronounced “cro-SAN-wich”?
On the topic, we would buy ours when I was growing up from a French/Italian bakery owned by an Italian couple. My dad remembers going to the shop since the late 1960s, and doesn’t ever remember the croissants being treated like something out of the ordinary or exotic.
Probably in the late 70s to early 80s, in Zabar’s in NYC.
Pretty sure it was in Paris, probably in the 80s. One of the best things about being posted to Mali was that there was a bakery there that had been opened when the country was under French occupation. Croissants and baguettes were a welcome luxury. I buy them on occasion now at the bakery down the street, and usually have them as part of a breakfast sandwich with scrambled eggs and bacon; my own version of a croisandwich but with, you know, flavor.
Yeah, 1983 when Burger King adopted them as their Breakfast bread…I was 8 or 9 at the time. My little town in Northeast Wisconsin didn’t have an Au Bon Pain (first one I saw was on a trip to Chicago around 1984 and I had to ask my Mom how it was pronounced) or anything so fancy. If the grocery store bakeries made crescent-shaped bread at the time, I don’t recall them billing it as a “croissant”. I was familiar with Pillsbury Crescent Rolls, though only from commercials.
I also first heard of them from Burger King in the early 80s, but the first croissant I had was in the St. Michel district of Paris, with saucisson, in 1991. While the croissant was good, the saucisson was terrific.
Yes…Burger King actually put their preferred pronunciation in the ads that introduced the sandwich.
Shortly before this. My dad drove a delivery truck for a bakery, and supplied croissants to lots of Burger Kings, and correctly deduced that I had never seen or had one, so he brought home a package of them one night.
I learned much later how craptastic those were.
Can you still buy a Croissan’wich? I never heard of them before this thread.
Yes.
Burger King, sometime in the 80s.
I don’t remember a specific first time eating them, but I was familiar with croissants some time in the 70’s in Portland, Oregon. I believe my first SO might have introduced them to me, which would have made it 1975 or later.
Roddy
read about a small hotel in texas (colombe d’ore?) in the late 70s. a guest entering a room in the afternoon will have a bowl of ripe fruit and a brandy decanter in his/her room. in the morning, a waiter brings in a basket of the lightest croissants one can find, along with spreads, coffee and the morning paper.
that’s when i asked my natural doper sister what those things were. was a teener then.
Like you, I think I first heard about them from my Mom watching Julia Child’s “The French Chef” on PBS some time in the early 70’s.
The first time I remember eating one was some time when I was in the high school in the late 70’s. There was a bakery in Eastland Mall in Charlotte that sold French baked goods, and I remember killer croissants and chocolate croissants. I’m nearly certain it was NOT Au Bon Pain, though.
By 1983, someone (Pepperidge Farms?) made a pretty good frozen croissant. I remember heating one up in my toaster oven in my dorm room before going off to get in line for a job interview at 3 AM.
Nor I. We aries aren’t supposed to be recycled souls 
So, from what people are saying, the term “crescent roll” is older? I find that weird, since I learned that term way later than croissants; in fact, the first time I have Pillsbury crescent rolls, I was disappointed that they weren’t as flaky as croissants.
According to the Wikipedia article, the first Au Bon Pain was opened in 1978:
That would tally with my recollections – I don’t remember any Au Bon Pains before 1977. There definitely weren’t any in the Pru while I was there in the 70s.
And I heard the term “crescent rolls” before the Pillsbury product came out.
Same except I was born in 1974.
Jjimm’s old.