The most French thing that isn't French

I have to come clean about this one. The croissant, the single most French breakfast on earth, started out as something else entirely. It was the Austrian kipferl, a crescent shaped roll with written records going back to the 1200s.

You've probably heard the story that Marie Antoinette brought it to France when she married into the royal family. It's a lovely tale. It's also invented, first written down in 1938 by a food historian, two hundred and fifty years after it supposedly happened. What really got the croissant into French bakeries was far less romantic: in 1839, an Austrian called August Zang opened a Viennese style bakery in Paris, and French bakers took his pastries and made them their own.

I painted one in watercolour and ink, all that golden lamination. There's a poster with a letter home and a postcard if you'd like one.

Shop the poster here: A Croissant, Paris · Travel Poster