Viennoiserie Opens a World of Tasty Treats by Jimmy Griffin

The Evolution of Classic Viennoiserie

We all love viennoiserie, from the simple but humble.croissant to our pain au Chocolat.or the Chocolatine, if you live in Toulouse,.France. Another.staple.of the classics is the Pain aux Raisins. You can find these classics in most bakeries.worldwide to this day. Other creations include almond croissants, cushions.filled with crème.patisserie and topped with fruits and fillings such as blueberry, strawberry, lemon peach.and so on. Not only are these staples abundant in bakeries,.but I have also seen.them.across.the globe in many hotel buffets.as tasty breakfast snacks. Most are made in miniature.form, not as a main breakfast pastry, but as an accompaniment to a larger selection of breakfast buffets..For several.generations, apart.from cutting into different shapes and altering the fillings, the staples.and sweet and savoury variations.of each one remained quite unchanged until a little over a decade ago.

As a professional jury member since the early 2000s and former president of the jury at Coupe du Monde in Paris 2016, I regularly saw an evolution of how both bread and viennoiserie were made and formed by international teams. Competitions are the cutting edge of creativity, and 25 years ago, there was the Coupe d’Europe de la Boulangerie, which focused on European teams; and the Coupe du Monde de la Boulangerie, which was the first true world cup of baking, created by French MOF baker Christian Vabret. The final took place in Paris every two to three years. It was a true world cup as it was the first time the globe was divided into four geographic areas: North and South America, Europe, Africa and Middle East and Asia and South Pacific. Qualifying heats took place in these regions as The Louis Lesaffre Cup, and the top teams went on to compete for the world championships in Paris. Many of these teams would win the world cup of bakery and set up other global and regional competitions of their own. In some cases, these competitions have both youth and professional baker categories. Some of these include:

• Les Ambassedeurs du Pain
• Coupe du Monde de la Chocolatine
• African Bakery Cup
• Nordic Bakery Cup
• Bread in The City – Rimini
• Coppa del Mundo del Panettone

I recently returned from Taipei, where I was a professional jury member at the City Bread Championships, organised by the Taiwan Bakers Association. Fifteen teams competed over three days, and there were substantial cash prizes for the winners: $10,000 for first, $5,000 for second and $3,000 for third. Competitions are the seeding nurseries of innovation and creativity. However, several driving factors have propelled the growth and development of viennoiserie since 2008.

Cross Lamination 2008

I first encountered the cross-lamination technique as a jury member at the Coupe du Monde de la Boulangerie 2008 in Paris. The baker at the time was a little known pastry chef named Peter Yuen. He presented these delicious fine and flaky layers facing upwards and it was nothing short of sensational. Peter went on to become a star, mentor and a guru to tens of thousands of bakers worldwide. The now popular Pain Suisse is a fine example of cross-laminated pastry. The photo was taken on a course I gave in The School of Artisan Food, Welbeck Estate in 2022 by one of my students Photo © by Kumud Dwivedi, India.

Bicolor Croissant 2010

In 2010, David Bedu, a French baker residing in Florence, Italy, came up with the genius idea of placing a layer of chocolate dough on a block of laminated pastry and then sheeting it to create a two-tone pastry. His first creation using his technique was the Bicolor Croissant. He followed with Pain Chocolate Bicolor and his process took the world by storm and is now a mainstay in bakeries globally. Pastry chefs across the world embraced the process and began using colored dough. Vivid reds, greens, blues and purples became popular globally and have become eye- catching pastries in their own right, varying in form and shape. In recent Viennese pastry developments, both Peter Yuen’s and David Bedu’s techniques have been merged, to give us stunning bicolour, cross-laminated pastries.

Social Media

The emergence of social media has shrunk the world. I enjoyed a very privileged lens when I judged competitions before small and confined audiences. If you weren’t in Paris at competitions 20-years ago, you would not be exposed to these cutting-edge innovations. Then came YouTube, FaceBook, Instagram, LinkedIn and TikTok. There now existed a

new shop front where bakers and pastry chefs could showcase their creations to a global audience. Many have become stars with hundreds of thousands or even millions of followers on these platforms. Some of the bakers were able to get royalties from their follower’s views and likes.

Influencers

Many social-media users decided to grow their audiences by investing in good cameras, sound-recording equipment and good video- editing software. Many of them gained millions of viewers who follow their daily lives online. Influencers have become stars and, as the name suggests, they have influence over their audience. Influencers have played significant roles in promoting viennoiserie in recent years, as well as other innovative pastry chefs who have created “Croissant Hybrids.” The role of the influencer is often as simple as making a video of a new pastry type, posting where they bought it and giving it a rave review. Then a snowball effect occurs: demand exceeds output, queues form at the bakery, and the initial success of the pastry gets plastered all over social media. Consider celebrated pastry chef Dominique Ansel.

The Cronut 2013

Ansel is a very successful French pastry chef originally based in New York. In 2013, he created and trademarked the Cronut, a deep fried laminated pastry that is essentially a croissant-doughnut hybrid. His pastry became famous due to its innovation, massive queues at his shops and the words of influencers sharing posts of queueing, buying and eating the Cronuts.

The Cruffin 2013

In 2013, Kate Reid of Lune Croissanterie in Melbourne, Australia, debuted The Cruffin, a hybrid of a croissant and muffin. She made the creation by shaping three strips of laminated pastry, before proofing and baking them in a muffin form. Deep muffin shapes work best. She then filled the cruffins after baking with a variety of fillings. Then she added garnishes. Mr. Holmes Bakehouse of San Francisco

later popularized and trademarked The Cruffin. Since then, there have been multiple variations of the cruffin worldwide.

Cube Croissant 2018

Swedish pastry chef Bedros Kabranian is famed as the creator of the Cube Croissant. He used an imported Chinese square Pulman-style tin with a lid to make his 10-centimeter- cube masterpiece. Cube Croissants first became popular in Europe, specifically in London and now globally, thanks to TikTok posts that went viral. The social-media posts were filmed at Le Deli Robuchon, which is a legacy brand of French chef Joël Robuchon. On a visit to Taipei in 2018, I first saw Cube Croissants for sale at Florida Bakery in sliced form, but they were slightly larger, the size of a small pan loaf weighing roughly 400 grams. I created a purple iced cube croissant that I featured on the cover of my book The Art of Lamination II in 2023.

Suprêmes 2022

Described as the new next cronut, the Suprême is a crispy filled round mouthwatering pastry, also a croissant hybrid. In March, 2022, the Lafayette Grand Café and Bakery in the Noho neighborhood of New York City debuted the Suprême, and it became a TikTok sensation. An initial version of the Suprême was a double-chocolate-filled pain au chocolat. Lafayette made the pastry base using croissant pastry that was tightly coiled, proofed and baked in high rings to preserve its round shape. They then filled each with distinct types of pastry creams or ganaches before adding drizzles of ganaches or icings and garnishes.

These days, popular flavors from Lafayette include the Rose Berry Spritz Suprême, Peaches N’ Crème Suprême, and Pistachio Suprême. They add new flavors seasonally, and customers are restricted to two pastries each to cope with the demand; queues form long lines outside their store daily.

2022 to Date

Innovation continues to wow and impress. The Crookie, a Croissant/Cookie hybrid was a popular thing when I visited Shanghai in Autumn, 2024. Cigar cross laminated pastries filled with mango and pistachio are other trends I have seen recently. I made The Madison in summer of 2024 at the request of a student at The School of Artisan Food. Its creator, executive pastry chef Laura Cronin of Eleven Madison Park, is the mastermind behind the latest viral Madison Square pastry. She recently collaborated with Dominique Ansel to make exclusive, plant-based laminated pastries. I saw many Madison Square pastries on display in Taipei, so the trend has truly spread globally.

Photos courtesy of Jimmy Griffin

(This article appeared in the Spring 2025 issue of Pastry Arts Magazine)