EDITOR’S NOTE: NCS Original Series “Eva Longoria: Searching for France” traces the long-lasting origins of French delicacies. Stream full episodes on the NCS app.
For vacationers getting into their first Parisian pâtisserie, a couple of of the treats on supply would possibly already be acquainted — some well-known French pastries have lengthy since entered the world’s collective culinary lexicon.
“Everyone knows macarons, croissants and pains au chocolat,” stated Gale Gand, an American pastry chef and tv character who studied at La Varenne Cooking School in Paris. “But there’s so much more than that. There’s a next level.”
The hefty cookbook “The Art of French Baking,” lately launched by Phaidon and tailored from a pair of traditional Thirties tomes by Ginette Mathiot, has greater than 350 recipes, together with little-known treats from the straightforward puff-pastry fingers allumettes glacées to Visitandines, tiny almond desserts invented by nuns.
Regions like Brittany and Bordeaux have their very own distinctive baking traditions, with buttery treats that come formed like bicycle wheels or coated in beeswax. Among the fairytale mountain villages of Alsace, the place it’s nonetheless doable to hear outdated Germanic dialects, the sky-high, ring-shaped kugelhopf hints at a historical past of intermingling French and German cultures.
“We’ve got the basics down,” stated Gand. “It’s time to expand our repertoire.”
Here are among the important French pastries to try next. What candy treats did we miss? Share your favorites within the feedback beneath.
Farms and dairies in rain-lush Brittany produce among the most interesting butter in France, which is the defining ingredient of an ideal kouign amann — a layered, yeasted pastry whose identify, within the Breton language, interprets to “butter cake.” (It’s pronounced “queen uh-man.”)
The coastal city of Douarnenez, the place the kouign amann was invented within the 1860s, is the article of pilgrimages for aficionados of the deeply caramelized dessert. Today it’s dwelling to a professional association of artisans devoted to producing genuine variations of kouign amann — just like the golden pastries filling the instances of Pascal Jaïn, a bakery overseen by the president of the affiliation.
France is likely to be an adamantly secular state, however its pastry retailers like to flirt with faith. Sweets impressed by nuns vary from the gingerbread nonettes, or “little nuns,” to the feather-light fried choux buns often known as pets-de-nonnes: nuns’ farts.
The religieuse — which additionally interprets to “nun” — is a little more literal. The dessert stacks two cream-filled choux buns into mini towers baptized with a dollop of candy glaze. Some say it resembles a pope’s towering mitre; others see the adorably round-bottomed form of a chubby nun.
You can discover an old-school religieuse in almost any Parisian bakery, and artistic variations abound. For a contemporary twist, go to the town’s Carl Marletti for choux buns baked with a crunchy craquelin coating and plump with rose-flavored cream.
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Baked in fluted copper molds coated in beeswax and butter, the cannelé seems to be deceptively easy — in actuality, the candy originating in Bordeaux takes days to make.
Its skinny batter of milk, eggs, flour, sugar and butter rests for up to 48 hours earlier than baking in a scorching-hot oven. The ensuing pastry, exemplified by rum-and-vanilla scented variations offered at Bordeaux pastry store Baillardran, has a custard-like texture and mahogany exterior.
They make a tempting memento, however don’t try to slip them in your suitcase. The delicacies are greatest eaten whereas they’re nonetheless heat.
First held in 1891, the Paris-Brest-Paris is the world’s oldest long-distance biking race, with a grueling 1,200-kilometer course and its personal signature pastry: the Paris-Brest.
It begins with a hoop of ethereal choux pastry baked within the form of a bicycle wheel, then stuffed with praline-flavored cream and topped with a constellation of sliced almonds. The dessert was invented in 1910 by pastry chef Louis Durand, whose household’s bakery in Maisons-Laffitte, Maison Durand, nonetheless serves a Paris-Brest utilizing the unique recipe.
Today, bakers throughout France riff on the traditional by including all the pieces from tahini to cherries and peanuts. In Paris, beloved renditions embrace individual-sized chocolate-praline Paris-Brest at Maison Philippe Conticini, in addition to the beautiful dark-chocolate Paris-Brest made by celebrity pâtissier Pierre Hermé.
Visitors exploring the Loire Valley commune of Pithiviers won’t understand they’re standing within the hometown of one in all France’s biggest desserts — till they spot the eponymous candy that has delight of place in its bakery home windows.
According to legend, the pithiviers has its roots within the first century, when Gauls mixed native flour with almonds introduced by Roman merchants.
The fashionable candy with the closest ties to that historical recipe is the pithiviers fondant, a glazed almond cake.
But the best-known model throughout France is the pithiviers feuilleté, two disks of ethereal puff pastry sandwiching a mushy almond filling and adorned with a curving sunburst of scored traces. You can try each on the artisanal pastry store À la Renommée.
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Not each nice French dessert is feather-light: take the creamy and fruit-filled far Breton, a homey specialty in Brittany.
Somewhere between a cake and a custard, the ultra-classic take is studded with prunes soaked in Armagnac brandy.
It’s the form of factor a house cook dinner might whip up in a day, but it surely’s additionally a critical enterprise amongst Breton bakers. Each 12 months they go head-to-head within the Concours du Meilleur Far Breton aux Pruneaux, the “best Far Breton with prunes” competitors.
You can try final 12 months’s profitable recipe — that includes domestically milled flour, half-salted butter and Agen prunes — at Maison Coeur, a pastry store that’s steps from the medieval Château de Combourg.
Named for Honoratus of Amiens, the patron saint of bakers and pastry cooks, the Saint-Honoré is French pâtisserie at its most theatrical.
A disc of puff pastry kinds the bottom; a hoop of choux is piped round its edge; caramel-dipped cream puffs crowd the highest. Then, the entire building is stuffed with crème chiboust — a gossamer mix of pastry cream and Italian meringue.
The ensuing confection is equal components crisp, tender and luxurious. If you’re heading to Paris, pattern the exquisitely conventional rendition served at Stohrer, a store based in 1730 by a pastry chef to King Louis XV.
As essentially the most well-known dessert from southwest France’s Basque region, Gâteau Basque is greater than a candy — it’s an icon of an historical tradition with its personal language and traditions.
A Gâteau Basque Festival takes place every fall within the city of Cambo-les-Bains; the village of Sare has a Gâteau Basque museum the place guests be taught to make their very own.
In a method, the identify’s a bait-and-switch. This deal with just isn’t very cake-like. It’s a young confection that sandwiches a candy filling between two layers of sentimental tart dough.
The two hottest fillings are pastry cream and jam made out of the area’s Itxassou black cherries, however don’t simply try one. You can do a side-by-side comparability at Maison Adam within the seaside resort of Saint-Jean-de-Luz.
A tall, fluted crown of yeast-risen dough studded with raisins, this iconic bake from the jap area of Alsace hints at a historical past of shifting borders. Alsace spent centuries shifting between French and German rule — explaining why this indisputably French cake so intently resembles related treats from throughout the Germanic world.
It’s as wealthy in lore as it’s in butter. Competing tales in regards to the origins of kugelhopf variously function the three magi, battles on the gates of Vienna and a teenaged Marie Antoinette.
Whichever story you select, the Alsatian model is a luscious cake-bread hybrid, sometimes baked in handmade pottery molds from the village of Soufflenheim.
Nearly each bakery within the area gives its personal twist, however one award-winning rendition comes from Boulangerie Stephane within the Alsatian city of Morschwiller-le-Bas.
Delicate layers of dough stuffed with finely sliced apples make the pastis Gascon a frilly retort to the essential apple pie — and a tribute to the culinary traditions of the southwestern area the place it’s made.
A crisp exterior yields to tender filling perfumed with Armagnac brandy, a barrel-aged spirit created in Gascony for hundreds of years.
While many recipes name for easy-to-handle business phyllo sheets, essentially the most genuine model options labor-intensive hand-stretched dough; discover it in conventional bakeries together with Les Délices d’Aliénor within the commune of Gimont.