Is the croissant really French?

The croissant is half Austrian, half French. Its crescent shape comes from the kipferl, an Austrian pastry that dates back to at least the 13th century. The flaky, buttery dough that makes it a croissant, though, is a French development of the early 20th century, when bakers in France swapped the kipferl's brioche-like dough for a yeast-leavened laminated dough, layered with butter and folded again and again.

The bridge between the two was a man named August Zang. In 1838 or 1839 this Austrian artillery officer opened a Viennese bakery, the Boulangerie Viennoise, on rue de Richelieu in Paris. It sold kipferl among other Viennese specialties, became popular fast, and French bakers began copying it. Their version was named after its shape: croissant means crescent. Zang himself went home in 1848 and founded a newspaper, Die Presse, which still exists. When he died, his obituary didn't even mention baking.

And the famous story that Viennese bakers invented the pastry in 1683 to mock the Ottoman crescent after defeating a siege? It's a legend with no contemporary sources, spread largely by a single food writer in 1938.