Croissant al Cioccolato: the Nutella One

In the US, “chocolate croissant” can mean either of two things. One is the French pain au chocolat, where you bite through layers into dark chocolate. The other is a croissant with a chocolate filling inside. We make both and keep the names apart, so you know which one is coming. If a menu only says chocolate croissant, ask which kind it is.

• Croissant al Cioccolato: crescent shape, Nutella filling, soft inside, tastes of hazelnut as much as of cocoa.
• Pain au Chocolat: dark chocolate inside buttery layers, more bitter, with a firmer bite.

Nutella comes from Alba, in Piedmont, hazelnut country in the north-west of Italy. Its ancestor was a hazelnut and cocoa paste that Pietro Ferrero, a pastry maker in Alba, produced after the Second World War, when cocoa was scarce and expensive and local hazelnuts were not. The first jar under the Nutella name left the Alba factory in 1964.

Piedmont had a head start. Turin's chocolate makers had been blending hazelnut paste into chocolate since the nineteenth century, a mixture known there as gianduja, so a hazelnut spread was a local idea long before it traveled.

So the spread was born as a way to stretch chocolate with nuts, and you can still taste that. Inside a croissant it gives a filling that stays creamy, sweeter and rounder than dark chocolate, with the toasted note of hazelnut underneath.

Pick the Croissant al Cioccolato if you are buying for children, if you like hazelnut, or if you want the sweeter of the two. Pick the pain au chocolat if bitter, dark chocolate is the point. If you cannot decide, the Pan Pistacchio e Cioccolato sets dark chocolate beside pistachio cream in puff pastry.

Nutella has a second job on our menu. The Caffè del Nonno is a chilled, whipped coffee cream, and one of its two versions is made with Nutella. Ordering both is a lot of hazelnut; a plain espresso is the gentler partner. Nutella stays soft at room temperature, so this croissant keeps its creamy center through the afternoon better than a pastry built around solid chocolate.