COMMENTARY, May 30 – "I’m so bored with croissants!”
This is a refrain I’ve been hearing of late: folks bemoaning how uninspired they find the pastry offering at the cafés they visit.
Putting aside the fact that even being able to afford to visit cafés on a regular enough basis to complain about the menu is more privilege than plight, maybe what they really mean is:
Why does nearly every café now sell croissants?
From classic "butter” croissants (they all contain butter, given croissants are made with laminated dough) and seductive pain au chocolat (just "chocolate croissants” for those not enamoured with French names) to cloyingly sweet almond croissants and savoury salted egg yolk croissants, there is a croissant for everyone.
That is, until everyone gets bored of them, seemingly at the same time.
Have we reached peak pastry?
Some blame how expensive enjoying croissants have become. There is some truth to this: the price of croissants in some bakery-cafés can be alarming when compared to the price of roti bakar or siew bao at your local coffee shop.
Though to be fair though, the prices of the aforementioned kopitiam staples are going up too, what with food costs going up and rarely coming back down afterwards.
Perhaps customers can stomach the sharpness of the bill when they are presented with a profusion of new flavours.
There are now croissants with peanut butter and jelly, and croissants with pandan and gula Melaka. Croissants riddled with scarlet ribbons of raspberry. Croissants the colour of midnight with a charcoal-infused dough and stuffed with oozing salted egg yolk.
The latter is a nod to those who prefer a little umami with their pastries. Some of us prefer savoury croissants such as one loaded with sautéed mushrooms or strewn with slivers of prosciutto. Or, for a more local touch, a croissant topped with fluffy meat floss and sticky bakkwa.
Heck, croissants don’t even have to come in their standard shapes anymore: the latest trend is vulgar wheels of laminated dough drowning in ganache and dusted with all manner of sprinkles. Anything to please the capricious deity of Instagram.
It can appear as though each bakery or café is trying to outdo the other. Alas, with such a surfeit of choices, many of us are getting increasingly numb with every new iteration. Novelty wears off quickly.
Let’s not forget that quite often the hard work of the bakers and pastry chefs in the kitchen are cancelled out by how the final product is served.
Be it frozen or fresh, when croissants are warmed up in microwaves, they end up too damp; leave them too long in ovens, the reheated pastry is crunchy – almost charred – rather than airy and flaky.
Which is all to say when someone tells me "I’m so bored with croissants!”, I can see where they are coming from.
However, I am still entranced by the memory of dropping by a boulangerie in Paris years ago. It had become a morning ritual, stopping by to grab croissants for our breakfast, to go with the café au lait we would make in the tiny apartment we had rented.
This was just part of everyday life, part of our mornings and those of Parisians. The way heading out early to bungkus freshly made roti canai is routine for so many of us here in Malaysia. There is something special about something so routine, so perfectly ordinary.
I remember how a new bakery opened up in Ari, my favourite neighbourhood in Bangkok, some year ago and there would be long lines outside the door half an hour or more before they open.
I didn’t drop by till those lines subsided but I understand that thrill of joining a queue, of waiting simply because others are waiting. Perhaps the croissants taste better for the interlude, in which our cravings intensify and we are charmed by our companions waiting alongside us.
Then it is time to order. Here I must confess my weakness, my inability to resist just one. How could I decide between a sultry ham, bacon and cheese croissant, or an inviting la vie en jaune, filled with passion fruit and mango cream.
Naturally and inevitably, I would purchase more than was sensible. It’s a character flaw, truly, but don’t we all want more out of life?
I hear people bemoan "I’m so bored with croissants!” and I wonder if they aren’t just eating too much of these beautiful pastries. One is enough, if you can rule over your impulses. One is plenty, if you can command yourself and your appetite.
(Yes, I am still learning this lesson myself.)
Sometimes we hunger for more even when we aren’t hungry. We are just greedy. We tell ourselves more is better, and then we whine about how we are sick of what we have gorged ourselves on.
Have less, and less frequently. Every bite ought to be a privilege, a true pleasure when we understand we aren’t entitled to it.
There is no delight like a hot plain croissant, fresh out of the oven. The crispness of the pastry you hold in your hands (no using cutlery, please!). The surprising puff of steam escaping. The rain of flakes all over the table.
You take a bite and it’s heaven. Save half to dunk into a café au lait, the milky coffee being sucked up by the airy dough like precious water up the roots of a tree, through the trunk and into the branches, the leaves.
This is the taste of life, my friend. Of a very good life. And we don’t need much of it for it to be exquisite and sublime.
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