My first experience with an almond croissant was back some time in high school. I was on my way from Canberra to the South Coast for a holiday with my best friend and her parents and we stopped in at the Braidwood Bakery. I still clearly remember it - it was a very large traditionally-shaped croissant, sliced open and filed with a thin layer of chocolate and a thin layer of pastry cream. On top was lots of toasted flaked almonds and lots of icing sugar. It was love at first bite.
The Braidwood Bakery has long since changed hands and no longer does an almond croissant. But I still love them dearly and buy them often. So I thought I should start an occasional series of almond croissant reviews.
The Central Baking Depot in Erskine St is an outpost of the famous Bourke St Bakery. They have lots of yummy pastry items in the window, including no less than 4 kinds of croissant –plain, chocolate, almond and almond chocolate.
The almond croissant is a traditional crescent shape filled with a small amount of pastry creme. It is topped with almond paste and flaked almonds, then sprinkled with icing sugar. It looks gorgeous, but for me the pastry of the croissant is a little too dense and oily tasting, and the pastry creme is too sweet. I never met an AC that I didn’t like, but I have been known to walk past this bakery and not buy one, so its clearly not up there with my favourites. In the interests of research I think I will have to try the almond chocolate version in the future, but that really does seem like gilding the lily whatever that means.
Central Baking Depot - 37-39 Erskine St Sydney no website!
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