As part of my Christmas gift this past year, Chris got me a croissant making class at Mille Feuille Bakery. The class had just six students, and the baker/owner Oliver, who is from Paris and schooled in pastry there, showed us the different steps to making croissants. It’s actually a three-day process, but he was able to have a lot of the parts pre-made and done for us to condense it into just three hours. In the end, I was able to roll out, shape, fold, egg-wash, and bake 17 croissants – 10 regular, four almond-paste-filled, and three chocolate. I even have dough I took home to make 10 more next weekend!

When I ate my first one at the end of class, it was straight out of the oven – light, airy, subtly sweet, and incredibly buttery with its many, many layers. I could probably have eaten five or six of these without even realizing it. I’d never had a croissant that fresh in my life, and it was just so shocking how light it was, given I knew exactly how much butter went into these beauties.

I had Bart in my purse during the entire class. I wanted to take him with me because although Ed wouldn’t have really enjoyed a baking class, he definitely would have enjoyed the end part of eating all of those babies up. If he were there with me as the baking sheets were coming out of the oven, he probably would have eaten half of them in one sitting. Ed was such a guy – just scarfed down food without realizing exactly how much he was eating. Yet he never seemed to gain weight.