Pretzel Croissants At Arlequin Café
When the pretzel ran headlong into a croissant
New Yorkers can spend all the time they want lining up for a cronut. What we always crave is The City Bakery's famous pretzel croissant.
And now we have our own.
Bill Corbett, executive pastry chef for the Absinthe Group, and his staff spent a year testing recipes for pretzel croissants, perfecting the formula in time for the Killed by Dessert fund-raiser in May.
A few days ago, the croissants ($3.50) finally appeared in the pastry case at Arlequin Café.
Corbett first makes a standard pretzel dough, then folds and rolls butter into it. ("Not too much, or it'd be gross," he says.) Once formed, the crescents are dipped in a baking-soda solution and sprinkled with coarse salt.
The pastries smell like warm, soft pretzels, and have that familiar glossy exterior. But the outer layers begin slaking off as soon as you bite in, and the interior reveals thousands of air pockets, each perfumed with melted butter.
It's even better, we think, than the original.