“The Art of French Baking,” recently released by Phaidon and adapted from a pair of classic 1930s tomes by Ginette Mathiot, has more than 350 recipes.
For travelers stepping into their first Parisian pâtisserie, a few of the treats on offer might already be familiar — some famous French pastries have long since entered the world’s collective culinary lexicon.
,” said Gale Gand, an American pastry chef and television personality who studied at La Varenne Cooking School in Paris.
“But there’s so much more than that. There’s a next level. ”,” recently released by Phaidon and adapted from a pair of classic 1930s tomes by Ginette Mathiot, has more than 350 recipes, including little-known treats from the simple puff-pastry fingershave their own distinctive baking traditions, with buttery treats that come shaped like bicycle wheels or coated in beeswax.
Among the fairytale mountain villages of Alsace, where it’s still possible to hear old Germanic dialects, the sky-high, ring-shaped“We’ve got the basics down,” said Gand.
“It’s time to expand our repertoire. ” Here are some of the essential French pastries to try next. What sweet treats did we miss? Share your favorites in the comments below.
Farms and dairies in rain-lush Brittany produce some of the finest butter in France, which is the defining ingredient of a perfect— a layered, yeasted pastry whose name, in the Breton language, translates to “butter cake. ” was invented in the 1860s, is the object of pilgrimages for aficionados of the deeply caramelized dessert. Today it’s home to aFrance might be an adamantly secular state, but its pastry shops like to flirt with religion.
Sweets inspired by nuns range from the gingerbread— which also translates to “nun” — is a bit more literal. The dessert stacks two cream-filled choux buns into mini towers baptized with a dollop of sweet glaze. Some say it resembles a pope’s towering mitre; others see the adorably round-bottomed shape of a chubby nun.looks deceptively simple — in reality, the sweet originating in Bordeaux takes days to make.
Its thin batter of milk, eggs, flour, sugar and butter rests for up to 48 hours before baking in a scorching-hot oven. The resulting pastry, exemplified by rum-and-vanilla scented versions sold at Bordeaux pastry shopThey make a tempting souvenir, but don’t try to slip them in your suitcase. The delicacies are best eaten while they’re still warm.is the world’s oldest long-distance cycling race, with a grueling 1,200-kilometer course and its own signature pastry: the Paris-Brest.
It starts with a ring of airy choux pastry baked in the shape of a bicycle wheel, then filled with praline-flavored cream and topped with a constellation of sliced almonds. The dessert was invented in 1910 by pastry chef Louis Durand, whose family’s bakery in Maisons-Laffitte,Today, bakers across France riff on the classic by adding everything from tahini to cherries and peanuts.
In Paris, beloved renditions include individual-sizedThe classic pithiviers consists of two disks of airy puff pastry that sandwich a soft almond filling. commune of Pithiviers might not realize they are standing in the hometown of one of France’s greatest desserts — until they spot the eponymous sweet that has pride of place in its bakery windows. has its roots in the first century, when Gauls combined local flour with almonds brought by Roman traders.
, two disks of airy puff pastry sandwiching a soft almond filling and adorned with a curving sunburst of scored lines. You can try both at the artisanal pastry shop Far Breton is an iconic prune dessert from the Brittany region of France that's anything but light. Somewhere between a cake and a custard, the ultra-classic take is studded with prunes soaked in Armagnac brandy.
It’s the kind of thing a home cook could whip up in an afternoon, but it’s also a serious business among Breton bakers. Each year they go head-to-head in theMaison CoeurNamed for Honoratus of Amiens, the patron saint of bakers and pastry chefs, the Saint-Honoré is French pâtisserie at its most theatrical. A disc of puff pastry forms the base; a ring of choux is piped around its edge; caramel-dipped cream puffs crowd the top.
Then, the whole construction is filled withThe resulting confection is equal parts crisp, tender and lush. If you’re heading to Paris, sample the exquisitely traditional rendition served at, Gâteau Basque is more than a sweet — it’s an icon of an ancient culture with its own language and traditions. In a way, the name’s a bait-and-switch. This treat is not very cake-like.
It’s a tender confection that sandwiches a sweet filling between two layers of soft tart dough. The two most popular fillings are pastry cream and jam made from the region’s Itxassou black cherries, but don’t just try one. You can do a side-by-side comparison at Kugelhopf’s orgins in the eastern region of Alsace — and its taste — reflect a historic border shift.
A tall, fluted crown of yeast-risen dough studded with raisins, this iconic bake from the eastern region of Alsace hints at a history of shifting borders. Alsace spent centuries moving between French and German rule — explaining why this indisputably French cake so closely resembles similar treats from across the Germanic world.variously feature the three magi, battles at the gates of Vienna and a teenaged Marie Antoinette.
Whichever story you choose, the Alsatian version is a luscious cake-bread hybrid, typically baked in handmade pottery molds from the village of Soufflenheim.a frilly retort to the basic apple pie — and a tribute to the culinary traditions of the southwestern region where it’s made. A crisp exterior yields to tender filling perfumed with Armagnac brandy, a barrel-aged spirit created in Gascony for centuries.
While many recipes call for easy-to-handle commercial phyllo sheets, the most authentic version features labor-intensive hand-stretched dough; find it in traditional bakeries including
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