Industrial Croissants in France, beware: Here’s the less-than-tasteful (and dangerous) truth about industrial croissants and other Viennoiseries pastries you are being sold in French bakeries.

Watch out for French Pastry Fakes You’re Eating

Quelle horreur – at least two-thirds of your favourite French bakery treats are ready-made and of poor quality. Fast cooking, shortcuts and low-quality ingredients. No savoir-faire there.

A host of French media stories attest to this cascading drop in quality. So do several baking unions. Just as they confirm the invasion of crappy quality breads in French supermarkets and the abandonment of the bakery tradition.

There are the Sweets  … And There’s the Sour Side: Industrial Croissants France:

Ok, so it’s great to have a passion for French tarts – but not a blind one. With the general decline in bread and pastry quality, easy to observe, hélas, the phenomenon has been worsening for several years.

A few years back, the alarming headline in Capital magazine read: “Patisseries: Be Warned, Your Artisan Shop Probably Sells You Frozen Food”.

“Industrialists supply the artisans,” wrote Claire Bader. “It has become commonplace.”

A host of manufacturers, she said, supply pastry makers with finished products, like croissants and desserts, as well as ready-made cakes.

So how, then, do these ‘producers’ of industrial croissants get to call themselves artisan? When all they do is pop the ready-made frozen blobs in a stove.

The response: A baker has to bake his bread to call himself a baker. Not so a pastry chef.

The market – and the shelves of so-called ‘artisan’ traders – are being flooded with inferior bakery gulch … Much of it made with palm oil and other no-nos (yuck for taste and environment reasons). Croissants are a horror story. Over 60% of industrial varieties are sold in bakery-patisseries, many masquerading as artisan bakers. And the whole nasty business is all rather hush-hush. Or at least, it was, until the media started talking about it.

French Pastry Heaven or Industrial Hell

So the moral of this story? Get making your own. Until the pastry stores pick up their act and start serving up a tart of traditional quality again. Of course, many are still genuinely artisan. You just have to know which ones. And they are sadly a dying breed.

“The vast majority rely on at least some industrial products to expand their lines,” Bader wrote.

The situation has clearly gone downhill since this story was written.

“We estimate that three-quarters of French Viennoiserie pastry production is of industrial origin,” says the Federation of boulangerie businesses upfront. “Notably the most common products such as croissants (40% of the Viennoiserie pastry market) and pains au chocolat (35% of the market).”

That’s surprising … that the truth is actually not closer to 70%. Given that, in 2012, current affairs magazine L’Express reported that 50% of croissants were industrially made.

Silencing the Industrial Croissant Critic and Crusader

The situation has even led to some heavy-handed censoring moves for those bakers who dare to speak out. In 2020, the Nice Matin reported that the National Bakers Confederation had repudiated outright the claims by Nice baker, Frédéric Roy, “slayer of the industrial croissant”. Roy is the owner of the Boulangerie Roy Le Capitole in the Mediterranean city.

“Roy has been denouncing for years the resurgence of industrially produced, frozen croissants sold without any labeling.” 

The federation accused Roy of a “Folle crusade” after he pressed for more regulations, claiming 80% of croissants sold in France are industrial. He was even hauled once before the French General Directorate for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control for his mission to restore authenticity to the bakery tradition.

Roy’s response was firm and polite. “I have children and grandchildren and I want above all for them to be able to buy an artisan croissant with complete confidence without having to wonder whether it is artisanal or industrial.” 

It’s incredible to see how much Roy was vilified for speaking the truth when so many people, studies and television reports have since confirmed (and echoed) his claims. OK, perhaps they put the figure at 70%, but let’s not quibble about the details. Either way, it’s a big proportion – and a disquieting trend that needs to be opposed.

Not Just Fake But Dangerous

Crappy croissants are a health hazard … In more ways than one.

Last year, a study by the magazine 60 Millions de Consommateurs highlighted the alarming presence of pesticides in industrial varieties. Convenience kills. Far from the artisan delicacies they pretend to be, the majority of these “iconic symbols of French breakfast” are inferior fakes. 

What to do?

• Favour artisanal products, urged one nutritional website. And local bakeries that make “traditionally prepared croissants made with quality ingredients”.
• Go for quality labels. “Look for certifications guaranteeing the absence of chemical residues.”
• “Read labels carefully.” And the list of ingredients. “Avoid products containing additives and hydrogenated fats.”
• Look at the origin of raw materials. When possible, “choose products from organic farming”.
• “Limit the consumption of ultra-processed products.”

In supermarkets, avoid the following labels in particular, warned health site Doctissimo after the study findings: Marie Blachère, Casino, and Banette.

These are gorged with pesticides, it reported, including:

• Piperonyl butoxide, a product used to enhance the effectiveness of insecticides. 
• Pyrimiphos-methyl, a toxic insecticide commonly used in food storage. 
• Cypermethrin and spinosad, two substances known for their negative long-term health impacts.
  

So, How to Tell a Fake from the Real Thing?

With those figures before me, I’m always on high alert for poor-quality patisseries – and so should you. These croissants and other pseudo-pastry masqueraders look pretty dull and uniform.

Roy says the fakes need to be clearly labelled as industrial. “Consumers need to know what they are really buying,” he told BFM TV.

He also feels it’s not fair “to penalise artisans who go to the trouble of producing a quality croissant”.

Meanwhile, apart from following your nose and good sense, keep these things in mind:

• An ‘artisan’ sign doesn’t necessarily mean artisan. Fake artisan bakery advertising reigns.
• Recommendations are the way to go. So is picking a place by checking the reviews on Google Maps in the neighbourhood you’re in.
• Also, there’s nothing to stop you from asking straight up whether the croissants, pain au chocolat, etc, are made in-house. I do so often!
• Cakes are not spared from this quality-down move either. It’s nothing new. Cakes gorged on inferior quality crème pâtissiere, etc. But this is only getting worse.

I feel it’s a challenge – one has to exercise one’s discretion more and more to eke out the good from the bad. It’s not that hard. But a bit of research and a few good recommendations help.

Bon appétit! You still won’t go starved of delicious cakes and pastries in France, but you have to be patisserie picky these days.