Why Your Croissant Is a Lot Like AI
Using ChatGPT or whatever AI has become normal, just a more advanced Googling, which is now in turn, a part of Googling…
I watched a YouTube video about making croissants in a traditional Parisian bakery.
I had no idea how they were made, and it was fascinating to see what an incredibly time-consuming, intricate artisan craft it is to make a croissant.
Which got me thinking about the croissants I eat. The ones from a local bakery chain, a coffee shop, or the supermarket.
Do they do all that?!
And why are they always so consistently good?
So, like a slightly confused labrador, I asked my mate ChatGPT how bakeries actually do this.
Three ways croissants exist in the real world
There are broadly three models at play, apparently.
1. The craft bakery
This is the French YouTube video.
Everything is done by hand. Skill, experience, and judgement are involved at every step. The results can be extraordinary, but they’re also fragile, expensive, and hard to scale.
This is croissant-making as craft.
2. The chain bakery
The difficult, technical work happens centrally:
- Dough mixing
- Lamination
- Shaping
- Proofing
- Often partial baking and freezing
In-store, the croissants are baked off fresh.
They’re not pretending to be handmade.
They’re engineered to be reliable.
This is croissant-making as system.
3. The industrial model
This is convenience retail. The upscaled version of number 2.
Fully formed frozen products arrive from large European bakery factories, are baked on site, sold warm, and do exactly what they’re meant to do.
In many cases, they’re not just similar across different chains — they’re literally the same product, coming from the same factory or supplier, with only minor variations in size or finish, sometimes.
This is croissant-making as logistics.
Which, in retrospect, had been quietly bothering me for a while.
Why were they all so consistent?
All so good?
And then the slightly uncomfortable question followed:
Did I actually know what a good croissant tasted like?
Or just a reliable one, from exactly the same source, irrespective of shop?
And this is where AI comes in
Once you see this, it’s hard not to notice the parallel.
The part of croissant-making that shocked me in that French video — the hard, repetitive, technical labour — is exactly the part machines are now very good at.
And that’s also true of AI.
AI excels at:
- Repetition
- Structure
- Consistency
- Exploring variations
- Doing the heavy lifting without getting tired
Humans are still essential for:
- Judgement
- Taste
- Context
- Knowing when something is right
- Taking responsibility for the outcome
Or, to put it another way:
Machines make the croissant.
Humans decide how it should be made, and finish it off.
The icing is the point
In baking, the last 10–20% — finishing, timing, presentation — is where experience lives.
In design, it’s the same.
AI can generate layouts, explore directions, create drafts, and do the boring groundwork. But it can’t understand your business, read the room, or know what not to do.
That part still belongs to people.
And the icing on the cake?
The illustration for this article — the slightly vacant labrador, drooling gently at a croissant — is hand-drawn. By me. From my own idea. Loose, personal, individual.
And the connection between croissants and AI?
That wasn’t generated either.
I spotted it.
I did ask ChatGPT to help me understand the baking systems behind it all, to confirm my thinking, fill in the gaps, do the research and analysis, and reassure me that I wasn’t completely off piste, or in my words “Am I nuts?!”
But the curiosity was human.
The connection was human.
The drawing was human.
AI did the dull bit.
I did the creative bit.
Which is exactly the point of the article.