Battle of the Croissants!

One of the reason’s I’m on my crazy Operation: nWo 2 quest is because of Dunkin Donuts sausage, egg, and cheese croissant sandwiches. I don’t live my life in regret, but I definitely ate way too many of these in too short a period of time. I had a Dunkin Donuts directly on my way to work in the morning, and I thought they were way too delicious. I still do, but we can all definitely do better.

You’ll recall that I made some awesome breakfast sausage. Actually, on that Friday evening, when I was staring at the bowl of sausage, I had a moment of introspection where I questioned what in the flying f*ck I was going to do with over 9lbs of sausage. Well, I froze most of it. I gave some of it away, and I dedicated some of it to the battle of the croissants.

At the Saturday Troy Farmers Market, at least two bakers sell croissants on a regular basis, The Placid Baker, and Mrs. London. Actually, on the Saturday right after I made the sausage, I stopped into the store front of The Placid Baker, which is around the corner from the location of the market, and I stopped at the market; I bought one croissant from each baker. At both places, a croissant was between 3 and 4 bucks (I guess butter is expensive right now).

For cheese, I had a block of imported British Barber’s Cheddar Cheese, which was sharp and delicious, purchased from Honest Weight in my fridge.

It was simple: sandwiched within the croissants would be a sausage patty, scrambled eggs, and thinly sliced cheddar cheese.

Here’s the hardware:

Hot cast iron skillet to toast the croissants, skillet to brown the sausage patties, small non-stick pot to scramble eggs (2 whole eggs, 1 white, butter)

After the croissants were lightly toasted, I got the sea salt and sour cream ready to be mixed into my scrambled eggs.

There was not much else to it.

Assemble.

Mrs. London - Open
Mrs. London - Closed and ready for consumption
Placid Baker - Open
Placid Baker - Closed and ready for consumption

Let’s start with the obvious.

Placid Baker (left) - Mrs. London (right) (this was taken with a cell phone)

Both of these were better than the crap at Dunkin Donuts.

Between the two on the table, it was very close. The flavor of both were comparable, but Mrs. London’s edged ahead because of the darker and slightly sweeter crust. Both were nice and buttery. The Placid baker had a slightly more flaky interior. In the end, the overall shape of Mrs. London’s croissant lends itself much better to be used as a sandwich medium.

Both were worthy competitors, and, in the absence of the Troy Farmers Market, I’m not driving all the way to Saratoga for a croissant when Troy is closer to me.

And it may cost a little more in effort and overall price because good croissants are so damn expensive right now, but it’s totally worth it to make something like this that you could be proud of, and it was totally an appropriate way to apply my breakfast sausage creation.


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10 thoughts on “Battle of the Croissants!

  • Britin @ All Good Bakers

    Please come try our croissants when we open on Del Ave.! Nick makes them by hand w/ my butter from Meadowbrook heavy cream, we sell them for $2.50. They are, we’ve been told by a couple of Parisans, more like traditional French croissants – not quite as flaky as those shown above but with a more buttery/crusty/bready consistency. One of the benefits of being in the bakery all the time is getting to eat one of Nick’s croissant right out of the oven! Eyes-rolled-back-in-the-head delicious.


  • Darth

    Those look delicious.

    My only point of concern is for you personally. You seem so pumped about going to the gym daily for whatever amount of days in a row you can. But then you post something like this – which is complete crap to eat. The Dunkin Donuts version is 610 calories, roughly 40g of fat, 100% of your daily cholesterol intake, and about half of your sodium intake. That’s a LOT for 1 meal.

    I’ve gotten insanely health conscious about what I eat in the last year. I just don’t want to see your hard work go to waste because of crap you eat. I mean, I love a good sandwich, and I’m sure the homemade is much better than the fast food version. But I personally can’t stomach eating that anymore (literally – my stomach was cut in half). My breakfast sandwiches these days are almost always egg whites, low fat cheese, and on an english muffin . . . with the occasional 2 strips of bacon if I want to treat myself.

    I don’t mean to sound preachy, because I’m definitely not one to considering the sheer quantity of food I used to eat. Even though I’m sure I sound like a dick, because I am Darth Dick after all. But I guess what I’m saying is I definitely would like to see more health conscious reviews on here – food that is both delicious and healthy.


    • derryX

      You gotta understand that what goes up here is a fraction of what’s going on at home. And things are filtered so that the more interesting things are what I’m writing about; more importantly, the local foods are the focus of much of the recent things I’ve been working on. People aren’t going to want to read about me grilling a chicken breast for dinner.

      That said, my approach toward my fitness on this pass is more practical. I’m leaning toward more whole foods and things that are healthier than my usual habits, but not as extreme as I’ve gone in the past, just because so many attempts have ended in the slippery cliff of complacency. I’m trying to arrive at a diet that is sustainable and easy for me to follow with my schedule; things are starting to approach some of my older, cleaner habits, and the content here is going to start reflecting that. I’m also about 4-6 weeks behind on blog writeups (I think this happened back in January, and I just got to finish writing it up now!)

      The results I’ve been obtaining have been reasonable and well surpass any goals I’ve set. It’s not a race, and I’m walking a happy medium between the occasional indulgence and living fit.

      The one thing that should be perfectly clear about this is that a croissant, sausage, egg, and cheese sandwich in this incarnation is far from “healthy,” but, by putting in some work and looking around locally, you can make something delicious in your home.


      • Darth

        Yeah – I completely understand that. But as someone who is not local to your area, I still appreciate your recipes and try a few of them myself with items I get from where I live – such as your father’s pork store 😀

        I agree – healthy sometimes doesn’t really make for an interesting read at times, but it can. My wife makes some amazing dishes that are both healthy and delicious. I keep telling her to make a food blog of her own. One of my favorites is her stuffed spinach chicken breast in a honey dijon sauce. I think others would greatly enjoy it.

        I don’t know if it would interest “most” readers, but I’d love to read about post-workout protein shakes and things like that. But I know you have to cater to your audience. But it’s cool. I appreciate what you do post, especially the recipes. Well – in all honesty I stopped reading the Jersey Shore posts, but I appreciate everything else, LOL.


  • Valerae

    I may have to finally try Mrs. London’s croissants. I never make it past the Placid Baker without a bag full of goodies so rarely stop at any of the other bakers (except for Our Daily Bread for those bagels).

    Great post. If I wasn’t already scarfing down a breakfast of leftover General Tso’s chicken for breakfast I’d be drooling even more.


  • -S

    Why, why do that to perfectly good croissants, whyyyyyyyyyyy?



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