If you ever find yourself lucky enough to procure a pastry that is so delicate you can barely breathe on it without flakes flying everywhere, and you question, “How on earth do I eat this without it falling apart in a million golden pieces onto the table, my shirt, and the floor beneath me?”, I am with you.

It’s rare to find such a perfect pastry where I live, so I haven’t had much occasion to practice. When we were in Paris, though, we ate pastries daily. This is a thing you can do when you walk miles and miles every day. It brought me joy every time. I went to bed excited to get up in the morning to walk to a café in the cool air, order a croissant at the counter, and sit outside to sip coffee and try to figure out how to eat this crisp golden delicacy without looking like a savage. Pigeons feasted on the flakes that drifted to the ground beneath me.

Early in our trip, we found a boulangerie a five minute walk from our apartment that made the most exquisite croissant I’ve ever tasted. Just looking at it, airy and light and devastatingly delicate, I wondered, how am I going to eat this gracefully? If I bite into it whole, flakes will explode in my face. They’ll stick to my chin and fly into my eye and sprinkle my shirt. If I tear it into bite sized pieces, flakes will explode beyond the rim of my plate and stick like leaves to my fingers, and I’ll crush the crescent’s beautiful airy dome.

I tried both methods — biting and pinching — and got the results I expected. Flakes everywhere. An embarrassment to myself and a picnic for the pigeons. I sheepishly brushed the pile of amber leaf off the table into my hand to at least collect the crumbs on the plate.

I Googled “how to eat a croissant” and didn’t get much help. Google gave the the same options: bite or break into bite size pieces.

The next day, when we went to the same boulangerie, the boulangerie that now that we’re home, I dream about and wish I had access to, I ordered my croissant but sat for a few minutes to watch how other people ate theirs. We were in the natural habitat of croissant eaters, surely there was a way. And in fewer than five minutes, I had an answer.

Two tables down sat a man in a fine summer suit. The tips of his perfect croissant hung off the edges of the tiny plate the boulangerie served them on. He picked up the croissant and held it close to the center of the plate, the fingers of both hands close to one tip. He pinched off a small piece, leaned over his plate to put it in his mouth, set the croissant down, and then sat back and chewed. The flake fallout was mostly contained since he held the pastry low to the plate, and he hadn’t crushed the air out of the croissant since he’d held it near where he pinched a piece off. Once he finished chewing, he dabbed all the loose flakes from his plate with his fingers and thumb and ate them, effectively keeping his area clean between bites. He did this with each bite until the croissant was gone.

Genius.

I mimicked him, and though my technique was not perfect, I felt much more couth. I can maybe get there one day. Now that we’re back home, I’ve been searching for the perfect pastry to practice with. I haven’t found one yet, but I’ll keep looking. The next step will be to figure out how to add jam and still eat with grace.