Pastries are among the essential foods for starting a busy day thanks to the French who invented the unique and most delicious pieces of bread, cookies, and cakes. These products are available on a broader range of categories hence providing an exclusive selection for your taste. With different preparation methods accompanied by varying ingredients, French pastries are the best fast foods served within the United States, Canada, and around the world. As such, let’s break down the different types of French pastries you should know.
1. Croissant
Croissants are flaky, buttery and viennoiserie pastries made from yeast, butter, and leavened dough and originating from Austria, though they are widely associated with France. The French croissant pastry-making procedure entail layering the mixture made with yeast and with the addition of butter and rolled several times through a laminating process. The outcome is dough saturated with butter producing a crackled exterior and a soft interior on each bite. Croissants are rich in flavor and have airy texture and can be made at home.
2. Macaron
Another French pastry is the macaron, introduced by Catherine de Medici in the 1500s from Italy to France. The ingredients used include icing and granulated sugar, almond powder, food coloring, egg white, and ground almond. In the United States, the macaron became the trending meringue cookie leading to more food stores and other outlets specializing in preparing the dessert more often. As among the best the French can offer, the macaron is the best cookie to acquire and as to feel the unique and sweet taste.
3. Éclair
Éclair is a long, thin, and delicious pastry made from choux dough filled with cream with the addition of chocolate icing. Like most pastries, it originated from France in the nineteenth century under the name Petite Duchess. The ingredients are doughs, similar to that used for profiterole, choux pastry, icing, and flavored cream filling. As to make great Éclair pastries, ensure they are uniform when piping the dough to a rectangular shape before filling it with chocolate icing and vanilla cream.
4. Madeleine
French pastries also include Madeleine cake made from flour, eggs, sugar, almonds and other natural nut products. The delicacy originated from two towns; Commercy and Liverdun, in the region of Lorraine in Northeast France in the seventeenth century by Paul de Gondi. The cakes are baked in special pans and presented in distinctive shell-like depression at the center. The French pastry sponge cake is then covered with jam and desiccated coconut as well as glace cherry for additional flavor and passed through an oven for a tiny steamy puff on every bite.
5. Canele
Canele is another small French pastry originating from Bordeaux, France, and developed by Couvent des Annonciades between the fifteenth and eighteenth century. The cake is served warm with rum and vanilla flavors accompanied by soft and tender custard middle and a thick, dark scorched crust. The main ingredients used are rum, cane sugar, butter, flour, milk, egg yolk, and vanilla. The shape of the Canele entails a small striated cylinder of about five centimeters and a depression top currently widely consumed around the world, especially France.
6. Paris-Brest
Paris-Brest pastry is a dessert developed by Louis Durand in 1910 in France but has gained popularity in the United States and around the world. The French bread is round in shape and became famous as Paris-Brest-Paris cyclists widely used it because of its high and energetic caloric value. Paris-Brest pastries were introduced with only two ingredients; choux pastry rings filled with praline creams but has since been added more elements such as icing sugars. The Frenchman also ensured that the Paris-Brest desserts remain served warm and can be left for a day to bring out the softness.
7. Baguette
Also, on the list is Baguette French pastries made from basic lean doughs bringing out long and thin bread distinguished by its lengthy and crusty crust. Similarly, it originated from France between the eighteenth century and early nineteenth century and received its name in 1920 after multiple titles of the bread proposed. The ingredients used are flour, water, yeast, and salt, which comprises of 263 kcal of energy and glycemic load of forty-seven for every hundred grams. The Baguette is also referred to as French stick; French bread or French loaf depending on the region.[:de][:]
