Gâteau Battu

Baked in a tall, fluted mold, the gâteau battu is a yeast-leavened sweet long enjoyed in the Somme department of Picardy in northern France, around Ponthieu and Abbeville. It is characterized by its generous use of butter and eggs and by beating the dough for a long time; the name battu means “beaten.”

Once baked, there is a clear contrast between the deeply browned crust and the yellow crumb. It is a sweet that shows off that color and shape as they are, without covering them with decoration. One recette (the proportions of ingredients and the method) handed down in the Baie de Somme uses, for 125 grams of flour, the same weight of butter and 5 egg yolks.

A Butter- and Yolk-Rich Dough Worked at Length

For gâteau battu dough, plenty of butter and egg yolks, along with sugar, salt and yeast, are added to flour. The dough is worked for a long time until it comes together enough to pull away from the bowl, and is then left to rise.

Butter and egg yolks are the ingredients that give the dough its color and richness. Thanks to the air bubbles produced by the yeast, the baked crumb is rich yet comes apart lightly.

Traditionally, the combined dough is beaten by hand for a long time. Today, there are also methods that follow a procedure modeled on brioche.

The order in which the steps of working the dough to develop its structure and incorporating the fat are carried out also differs from maker to maker.

Rising and Knocking Back, Then Baking in a Fluted Mold

In the local recette from the Baie de Somme, the worked dough is rested for about 1 hour, pressed down once, then rested again before being placed in the mold. The mold is buttered in advance, and the dough is added to about a quarter of its height. It is then left to rise once more in the mold before baking.

Rather than baking the dough as it is after its first rise, this method includes a step partway through in which it is pressed down and allowed to settle.

The dedicated mold is a tall cylinder with vertical flutes on its sides. Although the dough sits low right after it is put in, it gains height as it rises, and once baked, a rounded top and a crust with vertical lines appear.

No cream or icing is applied as a finish. When it is cut vertically, each slice contains both the deeply browned crust and the soft center, which contrast in both color and texture.

A sliced gâteau battu. The fluted crust and the yellow interior are visible. Photo: JJ Georges, 2016-08-07, location unknown. Original image / CC BY-SA 4.0. Reduced-size version from the distributing source; no additional processing.

Old “Egg Breads” and Today’s Gâteau Battu

Old “egg breads” made with eggs and butter, as well as the gâteau mollet, are earlier examples of rich yeast-leavened doughs. Such sweets also existed in 17th-century Flanders.

However, it is not clear how they connect to the present-day gâteau battu, which uses a tall fluted mold and adds butter in roughly the same amount as the flour. A bread-making reference for professionals cites a 1912 recette as an example of a formula using generous amounts of butter and eggs.

By around 1900, the gâteau battu had come to be recognized as a regional sweet of Picardy. In the 1990s, the Noble Confrérie du Gâteau Battu (Noble Brotherhood of the Gâteau Battu) took on the role of promoting it.

Against the background of the history of breads made with eggs, it became known as a sweet with a butter- and egg-rich formula, and efforts to present it as a local specialty continue.

At the Seillier pastry shop in Mérélessart in the Somme, the family recette created by Julienne Trancart in 1902 has been passed down through four generations.

A single formula was not fixed across the whole region; methods handed down within individual families also carry on in the sweets of today’s artisans.

Sliced at Celebrations, Leftovers Rebaked

At weddings, baptisms and First Communions, the gâteau battu is shared at the table, one slice at a time from a single cake. It is also a sweet for ending family meals with coffee and jam, and it is served at breakfast and as a snack.

There are regional examples of jams to pair with it, too. Rhubarb jam adds tartness, and confiture de lait, made by cooking down milk and sugar, adds milky sweetness to the yellow crumb.

A leftover slice can also be soaked in egg and milk and baked again, like pain perdu.

From the celebration table gathered around a tall cake to a warm dish eaten on another day, ways of eating that use up every bit of the baked dough are also passed on by local artisans and heritage organizations.

Glossary