Word of Mouth: Stalking the elusive croissant | Arts & Entertainment

If fine French pastries are not your kettle of fish (I think I read that line in Frank Bruni’s ongoing collection of remarkable prose snippets that appear at the end of his online columns), you should stop reading here. If, on the other hand, you’ve been wishing the croissants you find tasted more like the ones you’ve eaten in Paris—or you wonder what all the fuss is about—read on…. In cahoots with my pal Hillsborough designer Jimmy Holcomb, we’ve previously tracked down the best bagels (very best was Isaac’s) and now we’re on to the best croissants. Jimmy’s radar for such things is insanely accurate, whereas I just seem to stumble into them sometimes, so I rely on his excellent taste and indefatigable efforts to get us to the right places. We also asked anyone we could think of who might have done a lot of sampling and whose taste we trust, plus the advice of Chapel Hill Carrboro Foodies and various reviews.

Our only requirement was that the chosen croissants had to be available in Orange County, not necessarily produced here—and even so we made exceptions for the top croissants in Raleigh, since so many Orange County residents are there every day. Otherwise, we had one from Cary and one from Oxford. Here’s how it sorted out: 

Chapel Hill: Gugelhupf (outpost of their Durham bakery)

Durham: Sweets by Shayda, Loaf

Raleigh: Boulted Bread, Layered Croissanterie

Cary: La Farm

Oxford: Strong Arm

And there were surprises: we Hillsborough folk imagined that the big city, Raleigh, would have a sophisticated audience advantage, as would a famous French baker’s croissant—but no. I remembered reading about our winner’s shop and her training in Paris and had meant to go there, but she had somehow slipped below our collective radar.

Our tasters were seven frequent Paris visitors to get as close as we could to a tasting panel whose palates could be relied upon to spot a croissant that tastes as close to those from a fine boulangerie as possible.

One taster has eaten thousands of Paris croissants in his day and is threatening to make some from scratch now. We were looking for the thrilling shatter of flakes, the airy layers, the intoxicating buttery aroma, the seductive pull of delicate dough, the very essence of the croissant that was brought to Paris for the first time in 1839 from Vienna, long before puff pastry was invented. Diana Kennedy, often called the Julia Child of Mexico, counted croissants as her very favorite food when properly executed, and complained in 2015 that she hadn’t had a proper one in Paris since the early 1980s—though she found one at a San Francisco hotel in the 1990s, so good that she asked to meet the baker.

It turns out Chapel Hill is a terrific croissant place. You’ll find our two top choices on any given Saturday just steps away from each other at the Chapel Hill Farmers Market. A short hop away in the Trader Joe’s parking lot is our third place winner, open every day but Monday, and you can park right in front of the door and pick up the order you called in and paid for and be on your way in two minutes. You could also stop between those two venues to pick up a French baker’s croissant at Whole Foods, to have your own taste test.

The other croissant on our Very Good list can be tasted daily at Cup-a-Joe in Hillsborough and at the Hillsborough (aka Eno River) Farmers Market on Saturday. So, semi-local, and very fresh. Oddly, we almost entirely agreed about each candidate, though every now and then there would be a single “not okay.” The good news is that there are very good croissants to be had in our neck of the woods, and we wouldn’t kick any of these out of bed. We’ve all eaten Costco croissants without complaints and Weaver Street Market croissants (if always regretting they aren’t as good as they were when they first started making the real deal), but these are worth seeking out.

The two top performers were close, but two tasters managed to eat the entire croissant sample from the winner.

BEST IN CLASS

SWEETS BY SHAYDA (Durham, 105 West Morgan St. 919 454 4015).

Shayda Wilson fell in love with pastry and sweets as a young girl and got herself to the Cordon Bleu in Paris to learn from the masters. Her process takes three days, and she uses the famous Normandy butter, Isigny Ste.- Mère, which may account for the irresistible quality and fragrance of her croissants. Everything in her bakery is made from scratch and homemade.

It’s very much worth a visit to her charming shop, which is open every day but Monday—you can sit at a table and enjoy a treat on the spot with coffee or hot chocolate. There are also surprises like matcha soft serve. Find her stand at the Chapel Hill Farmers Market on Saturdays, or get an order from Uber Eats or Door Dash.

If you want to try the famous Normandy butter, find it at Whole Foods.

Tasting Notes: excellent!/great butter taste, like French butter/nice flaky crust/perfectly layered/a drizzle of butter on top/good crust/ate it all! 

LOAF (Durham, 919 797 1254, 11 W. Parrish St. only three people at a time allowed in the bakery, so call ahead and pay if you know what you want). Loaf, our close second, is owned by Ron and Jaimie Graff and known for its outstanding sourdough hearth-baked breads and pastries.

Loaf is close to Sweets by Shayda, so if you’re in a mood for tasting to see if you agree with us, you can pick up croissants from both very easily. You can also find Loaf at both the Durham Farmers Market and the Chapel Hill Farmers Market on Saturdays. Bonus: Loaf also makes something rare: caneles, the French celestial teeny fluted domes of custardy inner dough with a crisp exterior—you should try them at least once.

Tasting Notes: major layers/yellow inside/very dense but flaky/crispy outside/a lot of butter/finished all the sample/good!

VERY GOOD

GUGELHUPF (Chapel Hill outpost in Eastgate Mall, 919 914 6511; main bakery at 2706 Durham–Chapel Hill Blvd. in Durham). These exceptional croissants are from the legendary Gugelhupf bakery in Durham. There’s a new owner, but the recipes and the head baker are the same and care is properly taken. Our longtime Paris-dwelling taster was very happy to find these so close to home.

Tasting Notes: Smells buttery/yeasty/a little bland/crispier yet flakier/more yellow interior/chewy and dense

STRONG ARM (Oxford,117 Main St., and at the Hillsborough Farmers Market, Durham Farmers Market and Cup-a-Joe on King St. in Hillsborough or delivered to your door). Strong Arm is a superior home- style bakery and cafe in downtown Oxford, well worth a jaunt to eat lunch or dinner, which may remind you that you can get Strong Arm delivery to your very own porch (for a quite small fee) on Saturdays, in which case you definitely should order not only croissants but also their addictive chicken pot pie and their outstanding breads, especially the grits sourdough.

They’re also famous for their pizza. Their croissants are XL, perfect for making sandwiches, and they also sell excellent chicken salad and deviled egg salad to stuff them.

Tasting Notes: big and bready/sweetish/airy/doughy but good flavor/yeasty/yummy

GOOD

BOULTED BREAD (Raleigh, 328 Dupont Circle). Boulted is a craft bakery and stone mill, famous for its breads, especially levain.

Tasting Notes: huge and darker, a mahogany color/not croissanty/no butter taste/flaky exterior—great crust/crust like phyllo/looks like a dinner roll

LAYERED CROISSANTERIE (Raleigh, 414 West St.). Owner Kawsar Chavez left a teaching career to pursue her passion for baking. She found it in croissants, specifically flavored croissants, and there are apparently endless flavors, exotic ones like passion fruit and more usual ones plus interesting combinations. To be fair, we were testing plain croissants, and although they sell them at Layered, it’s not their specialty.

Tasting Notes: smells buttery/okay but underwhelmed/looks like a beautiful shell/greasy aftertaste/too sweet/less buttery/chewy but tender/dense but not heavy/good layers

LA FARM (Cary—there’s both a bakery and a café called La Farm, but for our purposes they’re found in the bakery section at Whole Foods in Chapel Hill. They get delivered fresh daily.)

Tasting Notes: Yellow/cultured butter taste/curious taste/great texture/not okay

Something that turned up unexpectedly is that a couple of bakers are occasionally making a cousin of the croissant also in the Viennoiserie family: the magnificent kouign-amann (Breton for Butter Cake and pronounced queen ah-mahn). It’s even more complicated than croissants to produce, with its caramelized element and ethereal texture—so, so good. If a croissant ran off with a sticky bun, they might produce a kouign-amann. Both Sweets by Shayda and Loaf make them, and both also sell them at the farmers markets when they do, so be on the lookout. In the spring you can sometimes find them at the Hillsborough Bake Shop in Hillsborough.

Everything is on the internet, of course. Even the kouign-amann, which has its origin in a small town in Brittany, has a cheater’s version, a tweak on a Trader Joe’s frozen croissant that can be put together in 10 minutes.

Mary Elizabeth Williams published it in Salon and all you need is a box of Trader Joe’s almond or chocolate frozen croissants, 2 tablespoons of sugar and a buttered muffin tin. Let the croissants rise overnight and cut them in half in the morning. Set the oven to 400 degrees. Roll the pieces into squares about ¼-inch high and sprinkle with half the sugar. Pinch up the corners of each piece into the middle and sprinkle over the rest of the sugar once they’re in the buttered muffin tin. Bake for 25–30 minutes and pop them out of the tin when they come out of the oven. Let cool before serving.

Brilliant! You can add a big pinch of cardamom to the sugar if you like that. I used to stock Trader Joe’s frozen croissants in my freezer. They came straight from Paris, made with French flour and French butter and in both almond and chocolate versions. This year they switched to an American version of the same thing—looks the same and still pretty good but no longer outstanding. On the other hand, these are freshly risen overnight when you bake them off, and the joy of a croissant or ersatz kouign-amann warm from the oven is not to be overlooked. And you can buy a box of four for about the price of one good local croissant. Hard to beat that.

Fran McCullough is a James Beard Award-winning editor who has also authored several books on food. She lives in Hillsborough.