Discover with me the delicious French Pastries through the different French region.
This week will focus on Bretagne region.
Find here a little map with the localization. We are now on the West part of France.
I choose for this region five different pastry. We can’t say that Breton people are not generous! Really rich and comforting recipes in coming. Maybe due to the weather, which is know to be really rainy and cold there!
Let’s start.
Crêpes
The famous Crêpes comes from Bretagne of course! The sweet ones compose of standard all-purpose flour, but you could also find the salty one with buckwheat flour and which give a black color to the crepe.
This recipe is an institution there! You could eat them in specific restaurant named Crêperie where only crepe are cooked.
Served with a glass of cider, you will be on the top of the tradition!
If you want to taste them from the comfort of your home, find here my recipe.
Quatre-quarts (Pound cake)
We don’t know the exact history of this cake. It comes from Bretagne and we found the first mention in an American cooking book around 1760.
The French name “Quatre-quarts” literally translate four quarters, represent the four ingredients in equal proportion that compose this cake.
Find here this delicious recipe and all the instruction to bake it easily at home.
Far breton
The far breton recipe is well known in France and abroad. This really simple recipe, not expensive and compose of simple ingredients is really popular. The texture looks like a dense flan.
The recipe was created around the 18th century. Initially, it was a kind of salty slop served with meat. Then, it changes to become sweet with prune inside.
Prune are not from Bretagne, but as Breton people are sailor people, they were looked for long preservation fruit and consistent to be in good form for their trip.
Kouign amann
This delicious dessert could literally be translated by “butter cake”. So, as you can imagine it’s composed of a lot of butter!
This delicious recipe was created in 1865 in Douarnenez. Fun fact: it was created completely by chance! The baker Yves-René Scordia was out of cake during a really busy day at his bakery. So, he decided to try to bake something with the ingredients he had around him: butter, sugar and bread dough. It’s how the famous Kouign amann was born!
It changes a little bit to improve the folding of the dough to obtain this nice puff pastry we could find now.
Palet breton (A kind of shortbread cookies)
The palet biscuit comes from the puck game. These cookies have the same form as the puck of the game.
It seems they were created around 1670. They were brought to Louis 14 (French king) by a Marchioness. The king’s brothers really liked them so they asked their chef to prepare some for their breakfast.
He’s usually round and higher than the other cookies. Really soft in mouth it could be preserved for quite a long time in metallic box.
They are usually tasting as desserts with ice-cream or a coffee, just by themselves at any moment of the day or as a dough for a tart (I really like them with a classic vanilla pastry cream and fresh raspberries on the top).
YOUR FREE EBOOK!
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- A delicious salty version: The French Quiche
