1. Croissants - Can make me happy
To start with, I quite like to think of all the little things and reasons which can make my day. The things which are quite a miscellaneous group, seeming like endless, the point which I especially like.
Criossant.
Let me start from here with this bread. The bread in the shape of a half Moon.
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It was about 10 years ago when a new cooking oven was installed to our family’s new apartment we newley moved into.
A whole new house, which was a bigger and a better one. With that big oven, notable diversification in family dish choices came to our home as well.
Mom really made it possible for us to enjoy all the amazing food, coming from all the recipes which were not commonly served on typical Korean family tables in general.
Hand made pizza and a big birthday cake to be sent to my younger brother’s kindergarten were baked in the oven.
And, the potato cheese gratin which I did not have to really look forward to eating again, not because they weren’t good but because they were quite often baked from the same oven by my mom who was cooking it before I would start craving again.
Chili-marinated baked ribs and sometimes huge chicken legs baked with special skills are also from those I clearly remember.
As time went by, more special tools for oven baking started to pile up in our kitchen, then it was the time when using the oven by myself to bake some treats was not that hard.
In between the times that I would finish from school and chill at home before going out again heading to private classes, I would come up with impromptu baking to do right away in the middle of watching some animated kids shows. Since I had the recipe notes which mom and I used before, it was doable to recall how I should do next, taking care of the steps of the baking process.
That’s how I would create some sweet treats who had to chill out on our cold verandah once I would be gone to classes, leaving the cookies behind.
So back to the mention of that oven, since it was new, it came with a new recipe magazine as well. Being (around) 12 years old, I found that recipe book’s contents quite interesting enough to be quite seriously reading it time by time.
The very vividly colored pictures were surprisingly well printed on the papers, that glossy type of thick yet sharp papers which I would cut my finger one or two times back in time. Those images in that just one specific recipe book we had, are now remained as the representative visual ideas of any kind of food I can think of first even now.
On one bakery section of the pages, there were some sets of instructions where I got the very first idea of how the croissants can be made. Especially, how they can be made into 'that' specific beautiful and satisfying shape.
'So they are rolled out finely flat first and then they would be cut in those long triangles shapes…'
I was thinking that it makes sense for them pastries to finally look like -what we all know- after all those preps.
All the process to make it similar to what we are imagining now, were so interesting to know for me. And since all the steps made me so absorbed, the last image of baked croissants (as the results of the recipe) on the pages looked so nice.
I can say that it makes sense so much by being disappointed after I first tried that famous bread as a more grown up, for my first time. It could have been way better if I had no expectations at all of course.
However, how can I not be excited so much after examining all the prints from the magazine, describing 'the best' and 'most desirable' and possible results of the given Croissant recipe.
Each step had been depicted so fine, eventually leding to the final complete image the finest, it was maybe my fault to have read that pages to the level of unnecessarily impressive. Expecting ‘buttery’, ‘soft but flaky with bites’, and ‘well glazed’; these three scoring points from just a piece of bread.
Having been feeling a bit decent about this bakery after some imperfect trials where the satisfaction barely met my expectations, somehow I came up with new urges to try them while traveling around Southern Europe.
-Just as you would crave some more egg tarts when in Porto, and more Carbonara in Roma, I was actively looking for croissants in Paris.(Cliché or not, I did.)
When I was with my friend who came to Paris from another city in France, I was looking for that 'buttery one'.
When I was sitting in a café with a Korean company whom I met while touring, I was thinking too much about giving a go for another 'buttery one'.
Why call it ‘give it go’? Because my goal was not to grab any croissant, which means I had to take risks!
“Not just any croissant, you know what I mean. It should be really buttery and crispy, Noemie told me.”, said myself.
Highly likely the ones which could have been made in the morning -I got them late afternoon, figuring out that the things I bought never can touch my anticipation. The ones provided in hostels for breakfast were rather way better to be honest, they were so warm and delicious. Someone working in (or with) the hostel must have bought and brought them in the earlier morning so that they could be appreciated by me in taste.
Whenever I consider stopping by Starbucks just before going to work, or the times I ever pass by any shops where they look like they might sell the crooked half-moon shaped treat, I easily get excited.
Not just about the bun itself, maybe only now I think that the possibility of my 'ifs' becoming realization; if they will be buttery enough, if they are soft-crusty, and also if they are warm(for this third one, I will be surprised if they are, for myself being so lucky.)
Even if I was not that lucky enough to meet any or all of these situations in my gourmet world of croissants, or in other words even if it doesn’t give me the gentle explosion of crusts around my mouth, when attacked by my biting, I would say it still counts since it must have had all the values once it was just baked.
No big money in my pocket nor in my Starbucks card, but still the way to make one of these two things happen, first is making the my weekday morning bit more cheering and the second is making the rest of my late started weekend more exciting- is a thought of grabbing a croissant.
