Today, we celebrate National Croissant Day! This day is observed annually on January 30th.
Croissant is buttery, flaky crescent-shaped rolls or pastry of Austrian origin. Made with layered yeast-leavened dough, then layered with butter, rolled and folded several times in succession, then rolled into a sheet, a technique called laminating. This process makes the flaky texture of the roll, similar to puff pastry.
It is one my favorite roll especially when I have it for breakfast with some fluffy scrambled eggs. Sometimes I love having it for lunch or dinner with some homemade Waldorf Style Chicken salad Tuna salad.
Croissants have long been a staple of Austrian and French bakeries and patisseries. In the late 1970s, the development of factory-made, frozen, pre-formed but unbaked dough made them into a fast-food which can be freshly baked by unskilled labor. Croissants are a common part of a continental breakfast in many European countries.
Croissants became very popular in the 70s and 80s. They were filled with different fillings of sweet and savory ingredients and sometimes are also used for making a sandwich. Sarah Lee began selling frozen croissants in the United States in 1981. In May 2013, Chef Dominique Ansel of Dominique Ansel Bakery in Manhattan, New York, invented a Croissant-Doughnut pastry and registered the name as “Cronut”, a pastry resembling a doughnut and are made from croissant-like dough which is filled with flavored cream and then fried in grapeseed oil.
The legend goes on over a hundred years later when Marie Antoinette married Louis XI first introduced the pastry to the French who dubbed it as a “croissant.” So, today, celebrate this day by eating some croissants with your favorite fillings, or if you don’t know how to bake one, just grab a pack at your nearest stores and enjoy it for breakfast or dinner tonight. Share on social media how do you love to eat “croissants” using #CroissantDay.
1956 Martin Luther King, Jr.’s home is bombed
On January 30, 1956, an unidentified white supremacist terrorist bombed the Montgomery home of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. No one was harmed, but the explosion outraged the community and was a major test of King’s steadfast commitment to non-violence.
King was relatively new to Montgomery, Alabama but had quickly involved himself in the civil rights struggle there. He was a leading organizer of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which began in December of 1955 after activist Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a segregated city bus to a white passenger. The boycott brought King national recognition, but also made him a target of white supremacists. He was speaking at a nearby church on the evening of January 30 when a man pulled up in a car, walked up to King’s house, and tossed an explosive onto the porch. The bomb went off, damaging the house, but did not harm King’s wife, Coretta Scott King, who was inside with the couple’s seven-month-old daughter Yolanda.
News of the bombing spread quickly, and an angry crowd soon gathered outside King’s home. A matter of minutes after his home had been bombed, standing feet away from the site of the explosion, King preached non-violence. “I want you to love our enemies,” he told his supporters. “Be good to them, love them, and let them know you love them.” It was a prime example of King’s deeply-held belief in nonviolence, as what could have been a riot instead became a powerful display of the highest ideals of the Civil Rights Movement.
(excerpted from https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/martin-luther-king-jr-home-bombed-montgomery)
