Happy National Croissant Day!

Education

Jan 30

Enjoying a croissant is one of life’s guilty pleasures. Everything about it - from the first sight of the golden exterior to the rich aroma and buttery goodness that hits you as you first bite through their flaky exterior exposing a web-like matrix of layers inside - the entire experience of enjoying a well-made croissant is, well, sensual.

That’s great, but are croissants healthy?

Well, it depends on your definition of healthy. More importantly, on how they are made. If your definition of healthy is a strict keto or carnivore or paleo or vegan or low carb lifestyle then, no, croissants are not healthy. But, if your dietary approach includes occasionally making space for the healthiest versions of the foods you enjoy most then read on . . .

*Yes, Bill has been making sourdough croissants and pastries for over 7 years. This is Brianna with her 13th birthday breakfast in 2016!*

Yes, we make croissants at the MSAK

You maybe wondering why and it's quite simple:

Because we believe that by sourcing high quality ingredients and relying on traditional approaches to making our food we can create the healthiest versions possible of just about anything!

Croissants are the perfect “poster child” for what we do at the MSAK

Let me explain . . .

Remember, real croissants only need 6 ingredients including water, but croissants can come in all sorts of different unhealthy forms.

They can be:

mass produced on machines,
made from low quality ingredients,
packed with preservatives and dough conditioners,
riddled with industrial nut and seed oils, and
chock full of flour that has not gone through the proper fermentation process to make it safe for human consumption.

These are the croissants you can find in grocery and big box stores, fast food outlets, convenient stores and, yes, even high end coffee shops that ship in pastries from large food producers to fill their cases. They should never be consumed under any circumstance.

A different, but equally dangerous form is when croissants become the base for a myriad of overly sweet, hedonistic desserts disguised as breakfast. Even when they are entirely homemade there is no world in which it makes sense to start your day with an intense refined sugar rush like that and force your body (and mind) to ride a blood sugar rollercoaster for the next several hours.

The third, unhealthy form is made by creating a product that superficially resembles real croissants in the way it looks or even tastes, but is instead made with ingredient substitutes to ensure it is aligned with a more orthorexic dietary lifestyle but offers other hidden dangers. For example, producing a low carb “croissant” substitute with almond flour and artificial sugar increases the consumption of oxalates and chemical additives and in our mind these dietary dangers outweigh the risk of compromising a sculpted six-pack.

*handpainting egg-wash onto our MSAK sourdough croissants*

The MSAK Approach

Alternatively, we have decided to take a completely different approach at the Modern Stone Age Kitchen.

We celebrate the highest quality ingredients and rely on ancestral and traditional approaches to maximize the safety, nutritional value, and flavor of everything we produce.

With croissants that means using high quality flour, butter, cream, salt, and the smallest amount of unrefined sugar possible and rely on our carefully tended sourdough mother that is teaming with wild, hyperlocal bacteria and yeast to transform the flour into is safest, most nourishing and delicious form possible.

This means our croissants are 100% wild, long fermented sourdough and contain absolutely zero refined sugar or industrial oils.

They are fermented just as long (and in some cases longer) than our sourdough breads and also contain high quality butter which is one of the most nourishing foods on the planet. In fact, it takes a minimum of four days to make our croissants from start to finish.

And, even when we go a little crazy on Saturday mornings and dress up the croissants, we continue to adhere strictly to our mission.

*Assortment of sourdough pastries - Croissant pastries top left to right | chocolate dipped, s'moressant, apple cranberry, everything but the oxalates, ham & cheese, Boston creme*

For example our S’moressants are filled with chocolate pastry cream that we specifically designed so that it contains zero refined sugars and is made using fully fermented sourdough mother to thicken. Even the marshmallows on top contain just four ingredients - beef gelatin, honey, water, and vanilla extract.

Our Everything (but the oxalates) croissants are topped with our MSAK low oxalate everything spice and are filled with homemade roasted garlic cream cheese we make by traditionally fermenting local milk and cream.

So, go ahead and enjoy the foods that give you real pleasure.

Just make sure that they are made with the highest quality ingredients and rely on time tested approaches to ensure they deliver what they promise in the safest and most nourishing ways possible.

And, remember, treating yourself to something like that is not a “cheat” but instead just another form of nourishment.