Bugne

Bugnes are fried pastries made in and around Lyon. They are eaten coated in powdered sugar. Some have thin dough that breaks with a crisp snap, while others have a puffed, soft center. They are shaped into strips, diamonds, knots, rings and other forms, and their texture changes depending on how thick the dough is rolled and whether it is fermented. A custom has also been handed down of using eggs and butter during festive seasons and making them without those ingredients during Lent.

Thin, flat bugnes from Lyon. Small puffs that formed when the dough was fried are visible. Photo: Ji-Elle, 2016-02-24, location unknown (the original description identifies them as Lyon pastries). Original image / CC BY-SA 4.0. Downscaled version from the distributing source. Any processing at the time of original publication is unknown; no additional processing this time.

Texture Shaped by Dough Thickness and Fermentation

Today’s dough uses wheat flour, eggs, butter and a small amount of sugar, and is scented with citrus zest, orange blossom water and the like. The dough itself is kept only lightly sweet, and the powdered sugar added after frying supplies the sweetness.

For thin bugnes, eggs are added to the flour and kneaded; once the dough comes together, butter is mixed in, and the dough is rested in the refrigerator overnight. The next day it is rolled out as thinly as possible, cut into strips or other shapes, and fried. In recettes (recipes: the proportions of ingredients and the method) that use no yeast, the thin edges and small puffs create a light, crackling bite.

For bugnes made with yeast, a dough containing eggs and butter is kneaded like brioche and left to rest. The air bubbles produced by fermentation contribute to the softness inside, and the thickness to which the dough is rolled also changes how much it puffs and how cleanly it bites. Because some yeasted recettes also roll the dough thin, the presence or absence of a leavening agent alone does not divide the texture into two types.

In Lyon, soft diamond- and knot-shaped bugnes are sold alongside flat, crisp ones called oreillettes. Different shapes also emerge from the same formula depending on the size of the cut pieces, slits and twists, and how the dough spreads when it goes into the oil.

A 1900 cookbook presented by the Lyon Municipal Library also includes “Lyon bugnes” made by dipping a mold into the batter and then frying it. Both the shaping tool and the procedure differ from today’s method of cutting rolled-out dough into strips. Once fried, the bugnes are drained of oil and dusted with powdered sugar; the thin ones in particular are enjoyed for their lightness fresh from the fryer.

Bugnes from the Dauphiné region. Powdered sugar covers the puffed dough. Photo: Jmvernay, 2015-02-25, location unknown (the original description identifies them as pastries of the Dauphiné region). Original image / CC BY-SA 4.0. Original-size image from the distributing source. Any processing at the time of original publication is unknown; no additional processing this time.

Made Without Eggs or Dairy, and Fried Even During Lent

The history of bugnes includes not only doughs rich in eggs and butter but also ones made without them. The writings of Nizier du Puitspelu, which describe life in 19th-century Lyon, mention a pastry made by combining flour and water with yeast from beer or a similar source, without milk, butter or eggs, shaped into rings and fried in oil. There were also ring shapes that were handled by threading them on string, so today’s diamonds are not the only shape from the past.

Bugnes made this way were also eaten during Lent, when people abstained from meat, dairy products and eggs. A custom has also been handed down in which shops dealing in meat served the pastries to customers so that they would remember the shop even during the season when people did not eat meat.

On the other hand, Carnival, which includes Mardi Gras, the Tuesday just before Lent, is a festival held before the period of abstinence begins. Doughs containing eggs, milk and butter also overlapped with these abundant meals. Bugnes have been made with different formulas within the same season: without eggs and dairy products during Lent, and with plenty of them for the festival just before it.

A Name Derived from “Bump” and a Custom on a Sunday in Lent

The 9th edition of the Dictionnaire de l’Académie française treats bugne as a variant of the Provençal-group word beigne, “bump; fritter,” and defines it as a fried pastry of Lyon, including both fermented and unfermented kinds. The Lyon word bugni also refers to fried pastry and belongs to the same family of words as the French beignet.

A dictionary of the Lyon dialect published in 1903 records that the first Sunday of Lent was called “Dimanche des bugnes,” along with a custom of decorating green branches with fruit and pastries on the way back from processions or outings to Saint-Fons. Even after the season of abstinence had begun, rings and strips fried in oil brightened the days when people gathered.

In Saint-Jean-le-Centenier in the Ardèche department, bugnes are also enjoyed as a winter pastry. The local event “Fête de la Bugne” began in 1997, and the organizing association announces a Christmas market and a bugne competition in which individual makers enter their bugnes. Both thin and thick versions are presented as pastries that differ from household to household.

Old Shapes and Scents of Bugnes

Nineteenth-century accounts describe, in addition to rings threaded on string, bugnes cut with a gear-shaped tool, folded and put into oil, as well as bugnes scented with rose. Under the same name, the ways of cutting and the scents have also varied.

Bugnes share with related pastries from other regions, such as merveilles and oreillettes, the technique of kneading flour into a dough, rolling it out and puffing it lightly in oil. Today’s Lyon, where thin and soft bugnes are sold side by side, continues a history of dough and shaping that has never settled into a single form.

Glossary