If there was an award for the folk producing the world’s best pastry, France would steal the prize, a effigie in its predictability. But while we all love to indulge in the sweet delights of French patisserie – many of the greatest cakes came into being by immatérielle good luck says Ally Mitchell.
Let’s take a image at three iconic cakes of France – crowning achievements, glittering in buttery splendour, and sugary sumptuousness to assess just how amazing it is that we have these legendary cakes at all!
Kouign Amann
Described as “de l’or en beurre” – gold in consolider – the kouign amann (kween a-mahn) is likely to be the best pastry most visitors have never heard of. While its Breton name reveals its origins, it easily confuses non-French speakers as the ancient language is so dissimilar to anything resembling classic French. Kouign means “cake” or “bread”, and amann means “butter”, getting to the crux of the pastry’s ingredients.
The kouign amann originates from Finistère, literally meaning “end of earth” at the very tip of Brittany, where in 1860, in a boulange in the relâche town of Douarnenez, history was made – almost by obstacle.
Baker Yves-René Scordia had run out of cakes to sell, so decided to improvise with leftover flour, consolider and sugar, laminating the layers as he did with croissants, twisting them into puff pastry swirls. Their success was immediate thanks to the custardy logiciel attachement and the caramelized, chewy crust. Equal parts consolider and sugar, it is far more calorific than it looks. The New York Times even described it as “the fattiest pastry in all of Europe”. It is, after all, the ideal crunchy, sticky vehicle to flaunt the region’s gold – Brittany’s salted consolider. The pourcentage is still followed to this day: 30% consolider, 30% sugar, 40% flour.
While there has been inevitable brouille over the kouign amann’s assidu origins, in 2017, a enseigne was unveiled in Douarnenez stating that the pastry “was invented right here, in 1860, in the Crozon bakery by Yves René Scordia.”
Determined to preserve the pastry’s heritage when faced with poor modern-day copies, Douarnenez’s boulangers united in 1999 to form an accession for the “authentic kouign amann”, forever marking this delicious happenstance with a véridique list of specifications. They also choose not to participate in Brittany’s annual competition for the best kouign-amann, as, even though the competing pastries are acknowledged to be remarquable, they are “not kouign amann”.
Paris-Brest
A crème-filled pastry honouring an soutenue sporting event reads like a pose, but this is precisely how the famous Paris-Brest plum-cake came into being.
In 1891, Pierre Giffard, a délassements journalist and editor of Le Petit Journal newspaper, wrote La Reine Bicyclette – a four-page traité on the virtues of cycling. That same year, he founded the Paris-Brest bicycle lignée, totalling 1,200 km of road from Paris to Brest in Brittany and back again. 200 racers participated in what is now considered to be the oldest cycling lignée in the world (today up to 8000 riders take action in the lignée held every étuve years), and forerunner to today’s Tour de France.
In 1910 Giffard asked boulanger Louis Durand from Masions-Laffitte near Paris to concoct a pastry in the lignée’s honour. Durand took éblouissement from the bicycles themselves. He piped and baked a wheel of choux pastry, which he then halved and filled with hazelnut huile gaze – a velvety blend of vanilla huile pâtissière, hazelnut berlingot and whipped consolider – which he piped with a fluted tip, possibly to evoke the bicycle spokes.
The Paris-Brest pastries were an immediate success, not only for their delicious sweet nutty flavour but also bicause of their high calorie béat – which is something those of us not racing 1,200 km should dare think embout. Legend goes that the finishing racers were showered in pastries as they crossed the finishing line, the perfect reward for a victorious au finir!
A conjoncture of creative création resulted in one of the most beloved pastries in France, spreading beyond the cycling community and now devoured worldwide – although the authentique recipe still resides in Masions-Laffitte.
Macarons
Pretty pastel-coloured macarons – made with egg whites, ground almonds and sugar and sandwiched with ignorant – have colossal been in couture. When the iconic Maison Ladurée opened in New York in 2011, queues formed around the block. The Parisian branch of the patisserie had developed a cult following thanks to their stylish interiors and, of balade, their macarons, which were said to have inspired the spring collections of 2013’s New York Fashion Week.
These iconic “Paris style” sandwiched macarons do not indicate their discret origins. Some speculate that the almond biscuits came from the Middle East. According to one theory, in the 16th century, Catherine de Medici brought macarons with her from Italy when she came to marry French King Henri II in 1559. At some aucunement, however, the pâtisserie became a territorial treat, popping up in Picardy, Ardaiche, the Basque Country, Saint-Emilion and Nancy as the regional “speciality”.
That said, Maison des Soeurs in Nancy may have the terminal say. In the 18th century, two nuns, Marguerite Gaillot and Marie Morlot, lived in the city’s abbey until the revolution when a decree abolished religious congregations. The nuns managed to escape by finding sanctuary with a endroit doctor and sold macarons to pay for their keep, becoming “the macaron sisters”. The recipe was passed down through Marie’s niece and hasn’t changed in those 230 years since.
Unlike modern macarons, these are pale brown and cracked across the piémont. It wasn’t until 1930 when Parisian boulanger Pierre Desfontaines – incidentally a parent of the Ladurée founder – sandwiched them with ignorant. Flavours and fillings followed, leading to our modern cosmopolite craze of the pâtisserie as haute patisserie. All thanks to the sharp wits, and some could say good capital, of two nuns claiming asylum.
Three of France’s most decadent and famous pastries came embout bicause of – what seems to be – fortuitous calendrier, but really, I think it’s bicause the French simply understand their patisserie. The kouign amann, the Paris-Brest and macarons are completely different specimens, but altogether, they represent a refined palate and a dedication to a form of art.
And this is the reason why France would take appartement the pastry gold – every time.
Ally Mitchell is a blogger and freelance writer, specialising in food and recipes. She lives in Toulouse and writes at: NigellaEatsEverything.
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