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According to Jim Chevalier, a specialist in French bread history, Christopher August Zang was born in 1807 in the family of a Viennese surgeon. As young man, Zang served as an artillery officer and studied chemical engineering in the Austrian capital. When he was 28, his military career was cut short by his father's death. After all, why pursue a career of any kind, if you've inherited a fortune from your dad? The inheritance was enough for some time of carefree life and then, all of a sudden, it ran dry. Zang managed a soft landing by marrying into an affluent family, but this experience taught him that once you earn some funds, it's better to invest them rather than blow them all on consumption. And so Zang discovered in himself a knack for entrepreneurship.
As a keen observer, Zang noticed visiting French people raving about Viennese bread. Whenever he was in Paris, he could see for himself that French bread – dark, heavy and sour – was nothing like what was available back in Vienna. There was an obvious niche on the French baking market and Zang resolved to enter this niche with a little capital. In 1837 he moved to Paris, where he and his business partner, Ernest Schwarzer, opened a new bakery at 92, rue de Richelieu. Do you need to know anything about baking bread to run a successful bakery? Not necessarily, as Zang and Schwarzer soon promptly demonstrated; all you need is to hire good Viennese bakers, trust that they know what they're doing and have the guts to invest in the technical innovations these bakers recommend. In the meantime, the owners focused on marketing; after all, if you're investing in technical novelties, the customers should be aware of that. And so, Zang's patrons (Schwarzer sold his share to Zang in 1839) soon learned that the dough for the bread they buy is kneaded not by a sweaty half-naked baker, but by a hygienic machine, and that the loaves are baked in a special steam oven which give the finished product an appetisingly shiny crust. Parisians were quick to learn about the advantages of "Viennese" baked goods, which owed their highly-prised aroma, lightness and freshness to a combination of good Hungarian wheat flour and baker's yeast (free from the hoppy bitterness of brewer's yeast).
<nomobile>[[File:Piekarnia Wiedeńska Zanga.jpg|thumb|left|upright=.8|The Viennese Bakery (''Boulangerie Viennoise'') at 92, rue de Richelieu, in Paris, which circa 1909 still displayed Zang's name in its shop sign]]</nomobile>
Zang's establishment was known as ''Boulangerie Viennoise'', or "Viennese Bakery". True to its name, it offered Austrian breadstuffs that had been hitherto unknown in Paris, such as ''[[What has the Battle of Vienna given us?#Croissants|Kipferl]]'', or Viennese crescent rolls (dubbed "''croissants''" by the French), and ''Kaisersemmel'', or kaiser rolls (which Parisians referred to simply as "''petits pains viennois''", or "little Viennese breads"). Zang's commercial success was soon quickly copied by local bakers, so that by 1840 there had already been a dozen shops offering "Viennese" breads in Paris.
Osiem lat później przyszła Wiosna Ludów, zaburzając nieco porządek zaprowadzony w Europie po wojnach napoleońskich. Francja na powrót stała się republiką; w Austrii zmiany były mniej spektakularne, ale udało się przepchnąć reformy, które wprowadziły m.in. większą niż wcześniej wolność prasy. Zang uznał to za okazję, żeby zainwestować w zupełnie nowy biznes. Sprzedał piekarnię, wrócił do Wiednia i tam został wydawcą prasowym. Także i tu postawił na innowacje: jego gazeta ''Die Presse'' drukowała krótkie akapity w kolumnach, powieści w odcinkach oraz liczne reklamy, pozwalające utrzymać konkurencyjną cenę. W branży prasowej Zang wytrzymał prawie dwie dekady, po których sprzedał wydawnictwo i zainwestował w bankowość oraz przemysł wydobywczy (kopalnia węgla brunatnego, którą kupił w Styrii, do dziś nosi nazwę Zangtal).
