Cubrik, the square croissant that drives Turin crazy (but now there is also the sphere-shaped one)

In the beginning it was the croissant. A buttery and soft croissant to dip in your cappuccino, and bite until you reach the cream that fills it. Nothing simpler or more effective to transform breakfast time into a small party. It was invented by the French (and who else?), who to create it were inspired – it seems – by the «kipferl» Austrian, a croissant-shaped bread that was prepared in the fashionable ones Viennese boulangerie Parisians of the mid-nineteenth century. From there, among other things, comes the term «Viennoiserie»which identifies all French-style baked pastries, from Pain Au Chocolat to Danish brioche.

It's difficult to innovate something so perfect. Yet, in Turin, there are those who try, and they do it with new shapes, trying to build a new era of the croissant. In fact, the idea also seems to work, given the queues that parade every morning in front of the pastry shops that serve the croissant 2.0, in the shape of a sphere, cube, pyramid or planet. Dozens – sometimes hundreds – of people wait hours to get one, eager to taste the latest novelty or even just to post a photo on social media with what is now a small object of gastronomic desire.

The Crubik

If there is a zero moment of the Turin war of viennoiserie, that is the day of the creation of the Crubik. Of Northern European inspiration (some pastry shops up there had already offered a product of this kind), the Crubik was made at the Farmacia del Cambio – the pastry shop of the most historic and famous restaurant in the city – by Matteo Baronetto's team, then led by Maicol Vitellozzi. Filled with cream and inserted into a cubic mold, the Crubik, with the help of some social influencers, immediately became a cult object. So much so that, one after the other, several pastry chefs in the city began making similar ones, each working on different variations of cream. Maicol Vitellozzi himself, who in the meantime has opened his own bakery in Turin, creates a two-flavour version (with half the chocolate dough) which he calls Crubik 2.0.

The pyramid

Among the many things that make Turin the city it is, there is certainly the Egyptian Museum. It is to this institution that he wanted to pay homage Roberto Miranti of the Orsucci Pastry Shop, participating in the geometric drift of Turin croissants with its pyramid, filled with gianduja cream.

The sphere

After Crubik, it is once again Farmacia Del Cambio that dictates the trend, with the arrival of another novelty, the spherical croissant. Seven months of research – the team says – to achieve the perfect shape, filled with a generous filling of gianduja cream.

The planet

In the new Northern European-inspired bakery designed by Maicol Vitellozzi, in addition to Crubik 2.0, the planet has also arrived, yet another creation on the theme of viennoiserie. This time the dough contains a further surprise: in fact inside there is a babà soaked in coffee with hazelnut cream.