If there was an award

If there was an award for the country producing the world’s best pastry, France would steal the prize, a cliché 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 pure good luck says Ally Mitchell. Let’s take a look at three of France’s crowning achievements, glittering in buttery splendour, and sugary sumptuousness to assess just how amazing it is that we have these iconic cakes at all! Three Iconic Cakes of France Kouign Amann Described as “de l’or en beurre” - gold in butter - 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 boulangerie in the port town of Douarnenez, history was made - almost by accident. Baker Yves-René Scordia had run out of cakes to sell, so decided to improvise with leftover flour, butter and sugar, laminating the layers as he did with croissants, twisting them into puff pastry swirls. Their success was immediate thanks to the custardy soft centre and the caramelized, chewy crust. Equal parts butter 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 butter. The ratio is still followed to this day: 30% butter, 30% sugar, 40% flour. While there has been inevitable dispute over the kouign amann’s exact origins, in 2017, a plaque 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 association for the “authentic kouign amann”, forever marking this delicious happenstance with a strict 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 excellent, they are “not kouign amann”. 44 | The Good Life France The Good Life France | 45