Sanxia Ox-Horn Croissant

The ox-horn croissant is a specialty of Sanxia, an old town in New Taipei City famous for its Qing-dynacy Zushi Temple and indigo-dyeing past. The pastry emerged in the early 2000s when local bakeries, inspired by the shape of the traditional ox-horn bread, refined it with a laminated, croissant-like butter dough, producing a crescent with a crisp, flaky crust and a soft, buttery interior. The Sanxia old street, rebuilt in red-brick during the Japanese era, became lined with ox-horn bakeries, each with its own flavour, original butter, milk, chocolate, taro, and the pastry became the town's edible souvenir, the thing visitors queue for after the temple. Unlike the French croissant, the ox-horn is denser and sweeter, the dough enriched with milk and sugar, and the shape is longer and more tapered. It is eaten warm, fresh from the oven, when the layers are at their most distinct, and the bake does not keep, which is why it is a destination food rather than a packaged one.

A long, golden, crescent-shaped pastry, the crust shattering into buttery flakes, the inside soft, pull-apart and faintly sweet, with a deep toasted-butter aroma. Eaten warm, the layers peeling apart in fingers.

The ox-horn is a laminated enriched dough built on repeated folding, like a croissant but denser and sweeter. A dough of bread flour, milk, sugar, yeast, butter and a little egg is proved, then a slab of butter is enclosed in it and the dough folded in three, rolled, and folded again, the process repeated three times with rests between, building up dozens of layers of dough and butter. The dough is rolled out, cut into triangles, and each rolled up from the base into a crescent, tapered at the ends to the ox-horn shape. A hot oven, around 200 degrees C, with a steam injection if possible, sets the layers fast, the butter's water flashing to steam and forcing them apart, producing the flaky crust and the honeycombed interior. An egg wash gives the deep golden finish. The enriched, milk-sweet dough is what makes it denser and sweeter than a French croissant, and the longer tapered shape is the visual signature. Best eaten within hours of baking.