A croissant is a buttery flaky pastry, named for its distinctive crescent shape.

It is also sometimes called a crescent or crescent roll . Crescent-shaped breads have been made since the Middle Ages.

Croissants are made of a leavened variant of puff pastry by layering yeast dough with butter and rolling and folding a few times in succession, then rolling.

In 1683, Vienna (the capital of Austria) was under siege by over a hundred thousand Ottoman Turks. After several months of trying to starve the city into submission, the Turks attempted to tunnel underneath the walls of the city. Fortunately for the entire city, some bakers hard at work in the middle of the night heard the sounds of the Turks digging and alerted the city's defenders. This advance warning gave the defenders enough time to do something about the tunnel before it was completed. Soon, King John

III of Poland arrived at the head of an army that defeated the Turks and forced them to retreat.

To celebrate the end of the siege and the part they had played in lifting it, several bakers in Vienna made a pastry in the shape of the crescents they had seen on the battle standards of the enemy. They called this new pastry the "Kipfel" which is the German word for "crescent" and continued baking if for many years to commemorate the Austrian victory over the Turks in 1683. It was not until 1770 that the pastry came to be known as the croissant.

 In that year, Marie Antoinette, a 15 year old Austrian Princess, married King Louis XVI of France. To honor their new queen, the bakers in Paris made some "kipfels" of their own. The only difference was that they called it by the French word for crescent, "croissant". The pastry proved as popular in Paris as it had in Vienna and Parisian bakers have been making it ever since as have bakers around the world who learned it from the Parisians. The sad thing is, the truth in this case is not nearly as interesting as the myth. No one knows when or where the first croissant was baked, but it was definitely in France and certainly not before 1850. The word was first used in a dictionary in 1863. The first croissant recipe was published in 1891, but it wasn't the same kind of croissant we are familiar with today. The first recipe that would produce what we consider to be a flaky croissant wasn't published until 1905, and, again, it was in France. In France, croissants are generally sold without filling and eaten without added butter, but sometimes with almond filling.

In the United States, sweet fillings or toppings are common, and warm croissants may be filled with ham and cheese or feta cheese and spinach.

In the Levant, croissants are sold plain or filled with chocolate, cheese, almonds, or zaatar. In Germany, croissants are sometimes filled with Nutella or persipan. In Switzerland the croissant is typically called a Gipfeli which typically has a crisper crust and is less buttery than the French style croissant. In Argentina and other Latin American countries, croissants are commonly served alongside coffee as a breakfast or merienda. These croissants are referred to as medialunas ("half moons") and are typically coated with a sweet glaze ("de manteca", made with butter). Another Argentine variant is a medialuna "de grasa" (of grease), which is not sweet.

Historically, the croissant was not commonplace in the UK. Although available in specialty places, it was only in the late 1980s that supermarkets started stocking them and then in the late 1990s with the growth of cafe culture did the croissant spread. Croissants are also seen in former French colonies such as Morocco.