Wine pairing with chocolate croissants

IIRC the reason Charon's croissants succeed is that he imports flour from France. French flour used in commercial baking (farine fluide) is an extremely fine grind, and has a higher gluten content that US or UK flour. (In fact it is so fine that it is typically pumped into the bakery from the delivery truck.) As I know to my sorrow, US recipes don't work (unamended) with French flour. So, time and skill are not the only requisites, and it is usually impossible to find true French croissants in the US with perhaps the exception mentioned above.

It is also true that at about 6 hours out of the oven the croissant degrades. For this reason a good bakery will produce small batches several times per day -- I know baguettes are usually produced in 6 separate bakings -- which is a practice it is difficult to imagine being emulated in the US.

However it is possible to revive -- if not to the original quality -- a croissant by sticking it in a medium oven for about 5 minutes. Still I think the frozen option is about the only real bet to get a "true" croissant. Any abomination in a plastic bag and several days old will likely provoke daughter to a grave crisis of angst... :)

As for a wine to accompany pain au chocolat, well. Some people espouse chocolate with a big calcab or zin, but personally I think it's a really foul idea, right up there with the plastic bag croissant. (Apologies to my friends who like this sort of thing: different strokes!) I'd try a decent Banyuls, or Rasteau VDN rouge, or in a pinch that "orange muscat" from CA that I can't recall the name of. Actually none of that's true, I'd steer towards a nice glbutt of Vittel, or a coffee. I don't eat croissants after the morning.

-E

-- Emery Davis by removing the well known companies