"The bakers were thanked and honoured and they decided to make bread in the shape of a crescent moon (the symbol of the Turkish flag) and the croissant was born. One hundred years later, Marie Antoinette (Austrian Princess who married Louis XVI), introduced the croissant to the French Aristocrats.
It was only at the start of this century that the butter puff croissant was created, and became the French national product in 1920. "
Perhaps somewhere there is an answer - that the old austrian croissant didn't look like the 20th century croissant and probably wasn't even called that.
I found references to brioche in M.A's short online biographies - in her famous alleged "Let them eat cake (qu'ils mange de la brioche) sentence, which she, as we know, has never said. it is attributed wrongly to her. brioche is similar to croissant which may have developed from a brioche, though both exist today.
On brioche from foodtimeline:
"Let them eat cake!"
Food historians tell us the composition of brioche has evolved over time. The brioche referenced by Marie Antoinette in her famous "Let them eat cake" phrase ("Qu'ils manget de la brioche") was probably not the same light, flaky roll we enjoy today.
"Brioches originated as soft and light white loaves, enriched with butter and eggs, much much less so than those we know today. They were baked without moulds. Looking at Chardin's beautiful paintings of brioches you can see that he has quite clearly defined the notches round the base of his cottage-loaf-shaped confections, which are handsome and tall but not tidy like a moulded cake. So I think that in the eighteenth century, and at the time of that poor, foolish Marie Antoinette is supposed to have said, when told that the people of Paris were rioting for bread, qu'ils manget de al brioche', the composition of the cake must have been simply that of an enriched bread much like that of our own Bath buns and Sally Lunns, so made at that period without benefit of moulds or tins, although paper bands were sometimes wrapped round them for baking. Certainly it would not be possible to bake today's liquid brioche mixture or crust for a fillet of beef or a large sausage then the brioche mixture is made with fewer eggs and less butter, or it would be impossible to handle."
---English Bread and Yeast Cookery, Elizabeth David [Penguin:Middlesex] 1977 (p. 497)
[NOTE: This book contains far mor information than can be paraphrased here. Ask your librarian to help you find a copy.]
And from the same source on croissants:
While the history of pastry dates back to ancient times, the history of the croissant [as we know it today], seems to be a relatively new invention. Part of the problem may be how one defines "croissant." Food history sources confirm that crescent-shaped pastries were baked in Vienna during the 17th century and that they migrated to France soon thereafter. They recount, but do not confirm/deny the story of the brave bakers who supposedly created the first croissants. This is what Mr. Davidson has to say:
"...croissant in its present form does not have a long history...The earliest French reference to the croissant seems to be in Payen's book "Des substances alimentaires," published in 1853. He cites, among the "Pains dit de fantasie ou de luxe," not only English 'muffins' but 'les croissants'. The term appears again, ten years later, in the great Littre dictionary [1863] where it is defined as 'a little crescent-shaped bread or cake'. Thirteen years later, Husson in "Les Consommations de Paris" [1875] includes 'croissants for coffee' in a list of 'ordinary' (as opposed to 'fine') pastry goods. Yet no trace of a recipe for croissants can be found earlier than that given by Favre in his Dictionnaire universel de cuisine [c. 1905], and his recipe bears no resemblance to the modern puff pastry concoction; it is rather an oriental pastry made of pounded almonds and sugar. Only in 1906, in Colombie's Nouvelle Encyclopedie culinaire, did a true croissant, and its development into a national symbol of France, is a 20th-century history."
---Oxford Companion to Food (p. 228)
http://www.foodtimeline.org/foodbreads.html#brioche
.....sorry for totally hijacking the thread, but i've been fascinated with the origin of croissant for quite some time... ;-)
