And even then, beware of scams, even in France. "Real small bakeries" is not a guarantee. Simple "croissants" don't have to use butter, and they often don't. "C

And even then, beware of scams, even in France. "Real small bakeries" is not a guarantee. Simple "croissants" don't have to use butter, and they often don't. "Croissants au beurre" have butter in it, but it may be only a small quantity, the rest being a mix of vegetable fats. They are usually better than the ones with margarine, but you still don't have the real thing. You need to make sure to get "croissants pur beurre", or even better "croissants pur beurre AOP". Many bakeries have both, the "pur beurre" are more expensive, obviously. When you look at the raw ingredient price, it makes a lot of sense that they want to use alternatives to butter. Margarine is about 4€/kg, fake butter 8€/kg, real butter 12€/kg, there is about 25g of it in a croissant. Considering that a croissant is about 1€ (outside of big cities / tourist places), that's a significant fraction of the cost. Also, most bakeries in France don't make their own croissants, pur beurre or not. Even for those that make their own bread. It is quite a complicated process and most bakeries just buy them frozen from a factory and only do the baking. Now, it doesn't mean they are bad, I prefer it when croissants are fully made on site, but I can make do with industrial dough, "pur beurre" however is non negotiable.