Gâteau Breton

Gâteau breton is a cake made with generous amounts of Breton salted butter and egg yolks, combined with wheat flour and sugar and baked round and thick. Its surface shows the sheen of egg yolk and a crosshatch pattern. Rather than being puffed up greatly with foam, a dough in which the fat is evenly incorporated is baked to a fine, dense crumb, which is its defining feature. It has a thickness unlike that of a thin biscuit, and it has been carried on sea voyages or cut into small pieces and shared among relatives.

Two ways of combining butter and flour

One method beats softened butter smoothly with sugar, adds the egg yolks one at a time, and finally combines in the flour. A dough made with egg yolks forms a dense structure, unlike a sponge that rises on beaten egg foam. Because the amount of flour and the way of mixing also change how it crumbles, the fat is incorporated evenly while preserving the flavor of the salted butter.

The other method is the sablé technique: butter is rubbed into the flour and sugar with the fingertips until sandy, and then the egg yolks are added. A traditional local recipe (the proportions of ingredients and the method) from Lorient uses equal amounts of flour, butter and sugar, but some artisans’ formulas reduce the butter and sugar relative to the flour. Pastry chef Christophe Adam says he still uses the dough he learned during his training in Quimper; he rubs flour, baking powder, sugar and salted butter together with his fingertips and then adds egg yolks. For his strawberry version, he presses the fruit into the surface before baking.

Whether to use a leavening agent is not fixed to one approach either. One recipe from the Confrérie du Gâteau Breton (Brotherhood of the Gâteau Breton) adds no leavening agent, and the dough is packed into the mold and rested for 24 hours. Some commercial products use leavening agents, and their methods also differ from the heritage association’s recipe.

Marking a crosshatch and baking through to the thick center

The surface of the dough in the mold is leveled, brushed with egg yolk thinned with a little water, and marked with a pattern. To cook the cake through to its thick center while coloring the surface, some methods lower the temperature toward the end of baking. Right after baking, the fat is still warm and the cake crumbles easily, so it is left to settle briefly in the mold before being turned out to cool.

With nothing sandwiched inside, the same dough continues from the center to the edge. Sandwiching prune cream, jam or salted butter caramel adds a soft layer, and in a strawberry version the juice soaks into the surrounding dough, adding acidity as well. Even within the same single thick cake, differences in sweetness and softness arise depending on where the filling or fruit is added.

Gâteau breton from the Lorient area. When the thickly baked cake is sliced, its dense cross-section is visible. Photo: XIIIfromTOKYO, 2020-05-04, location unknown. Original image / CC BY-SA 4.0. Downscaled version from the distributing source; no additional processing.

A cake handed down among Lorient’s artisans and households

In the Crucet family of Lorient, a story is passed down that they exhibited a “Lorient-style cake” at an exhibition in Paris and spread its fame. The names of the father, Jean, who was from Switzerland, and his son, Louis, appear, but accounts differ on whether the exhibitor was the father or the son, and whether the year was 1863 or 1867. Although the details vary, it continues to be told as the cake of an artisan family in a port town.

The 1893 magazine Le Pot-au-feu also contains a story of the housekeeper of a country priest near Lorient serving the cake to guests. It is a record suggesting the existence of a cake made in homes and parishes, not only as an artisan’s specialty. The 1900 edition of Lacam lists thick cakes from Lorient and Pontivy and, besides the fork crosshatch, describes a method of pressing patterns with a board. Made not only in artisans’ shops but also in homes and parishes, the cake has had its methods handed down place by place.

Provisions for sea voyages and a cake for pardon gatherings

Sailors from Lorient and the Île de Groix wrapped this dense, easily carried cake in cloth, took it on voyages, and cut off a little at a time to eat. On land, relatives and friends gather for the pardon, a local religious event, and share coffee and cake. The custom of cutting it into small diamond-shaped pieces, not only wedges, is a way of sharing one large cake a little at a time. Some people prefer it after it has rested for a few days, once the butter aroma has melded and the crumb has settled.

The amateur world championship, held since 2013, is a stage where home bakers show their skills. Its organizers, the regional cultural association Emglev Bro an Oriant and the Confrérie du Gâteau Breton, have repeatedly held events where people compete with methods handed down at home and worked to pass on recipes, continuing the cake’s heritage beyond artisans alone.

Glossary