The Paradigm of a Croissant
Tirana, Albania - June 2024
On some weekends, I stage at a local bakery. As the head baker was performing the final fold for the sourdough breads, I was brushing the flour off the bannetons and thinking about something profound he said to me earlier: He did not see his work as merely a vessel for his passion or a means of income, but an obligation to the community.
The café was an attractive yellow building with a trendy sign, large pane-less windows, high chairs facing inside the cafe, and vines dangling above the doorway. Inside there were books of psychology, history, and cats, baristas chatting away about weekend plans (in English), and handsome treats under a dim light including the golden pastry: the croissant.
Just steps to the left of the café was another café: a dusty exterior with faded and pixelated images of wheat berries and loaves of bread. Inside, there was minimal decor, a plastic chair for the keeper of the counter, and an unassuming display of white bread and the same golden pastry.
The establishments side by side served an interesting notion: how the golden pastry represented two different needs of a community - satiety and belonging.
In one café, the golden pastry fills the heart, in the other it fills the stomach. Where one focuses on the communal obligation to create spaces of conversation and relationship building, the other focuses on the communal obligation to feed. When we are blessed to graduate from the fulfillment of our physiological needs, the golden pastry reminds us to ascend to our obligation in fulfilling the needs of the community.
We owe it to the dreamers who create these spaces of golden pastries for their early hour, arduous work, their time laminating the leavened dough with butter, the uncertainty of the income of the next day, the reviews dishonoring them for an honest mistake. All to give us this pastry and space to quell our hunger and loneliness.
May we be intentional with our actions and our dreams. May we rise to our communal obligations. May the golden pastry unite us all.
