Palesa Motanyane
food
Not so long ago I could buy croissants at the local bakery, a boulangerie in a village in the south of France. Back home in Johannesburg I’ve become a regular patron of establishments where I’m guaranteed to find delicious pastries that originate in a country famous for its culinary exports. Croissants have become the most popular of these exports Fournos bakery has been selling them for the past 12 years. But it is no longer the local village baker supplying croissants baked fresh each morning. And so I wonder is the croissant I am buying here the same as the croissant I bought in France? Or am I getting a homegrown variation?
Peter Copoza, MD of Dlifrance, concedes “there is a difference between a croissant and a French croissant.” Both consist of flour, butter, sugar, salt and yeast ingredients that are easy enough to find anywhere. But “the butter and flour provide the taste, freshness and smell”, says Jean-Michel Ledru of La Brioche Dore. So a French croissant is made with very specific kinds of flour and butter, the most crucial ingredients. It has become big business for Dlifrance’s parent company, Grands Moulins de Paris, which produces its own flour to make sure it gets the final product right each time. Dlifrance and La Brioche Dore both import their “ready-to-bake” dough from France, frozen and packed in containers that have to be kept at a constant temperature of -20C. This is crucial because it maintains the freshness of the product. Containers take six weeks to get to Durban and another two weeks to Johannesburg, but the dough has a shelf life of six months. Fournos, on the other hand, makes its croissants from scratch. Mike Kalogirou, one of the co-owners of Fournos Bakery, describes the art to making croissants; the technique lies in the folding process where the croissants are repeatedly folded into alternating layers of dough and butter.
At Fournos, the main ingredients flour and butter are not from South Africa (the flour is Australian). Homegrown flour is low in gluten, which adds elasticity to the dough. Our dairy products are too processed, says Kalogirou, giving our butter a very high fat content. He argues that Fournos makes its crois-sants the old-fashioned way, a process that can take up to 20 hours and is usually done overnight; “the traditional way has been forgotten because it is time consuming”. The croissants have absolutely no preservatives because they are made on the premises. “The market is big on half bakes and frozen dough,” Kalogirou says, and they need preservatives “because the yeast will die without chemicals”.
But Copoza of Dlifrance maintains the frozen dough is 100% natural with “absolutely no preservatives”; hence the stringent shipping and transportation requirements. Vincent Keys, production manager at Bridor, also says La Brioche Dore croissants are preservative-free. Fournos claims a number of customers and visitors from France have complimented the bakery on the tastiness of its product. La Brioche Dore and Dlifrance sell here and to clients all around the world.
I’ve tried all three and found that croissants from Dlifrance and La Brioche Dore are similar in taste and texture light and flaky. Fournos’s croissants are saltier and more chewy. In the end it’s up to you whether you want a croissant or a French croissant. As with any form of art, each is made with similar ingredients, but the end product is different. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Dlifrance has three outlets in Gauteng. La Brioche Dore has three outlets in Gauteng and one at Cape Town International Airport. Fournos is also Gauteng-based, with three stores in the city and one at Johannesburg International Airport