A cake fit for a king: Exploring France’s ‘galette des rois’ tradition • FRANCE 24 English

It’s the pastry best associated with the month of January at the start of every year the gallet DEA or king cake fills bakeries across France and there’s one to suit everyone’s taste hello and welcome to France in Focus now you’ll want to stay tuned because by the

End of the show you’ll have the recipe for the best galet de in the greater Paris region the recipe is just behind me before that though let’s take a look at how the gallet DEA actually came [Applause] About so nine in terms of the theories that exist surrounding there are several they’re not all religious though are they NAD no well there’s no religious significance whatsoever it’s true that we tend to associate the Kings with the three kings in the nativity scene who are in St Matthew’s

Gospel those who came to bring the precious gifts gold frankincense and my however the king’s cake is more likely linked to an ancient tradition which can be dated back to the Romans and which took place just before our Christmas they held a banquet for the winter solstice which was called the

Saturnalia the Masters hosted their slaves at the table for a feast they picked a king with games like Jack or dice so it was always a game of chance which could name a slave as king of the table today when you get the charm you’re quite happy it wasn’t always the case

Though yes it’s true that the person who found the charm had to invite all of those present for a meal the following year and at the Epiphany when we share the king’s cake we’re usually in a big group so some used to avoid the expense by swallowing the

Charm which at that time would have been a bean so very digestible then in the 1870s some clever pastry chefs replaced the bean charm with a real charm made of porcelain it brings Good Fortune to find the charm at the beginning of the year it forecasts a Very Good

Year is uh something that celebrated a lot in France even at the Elise Palace uh each year there’s a celebration there but there’s no charm and there’s no Crown during the French Revolution it was obviously a tradition which quickly became highly controversial it was clearly no longer acceptable to mention

Royalty and the king’s cake almost disappeared at this time several Bakers started calling it the freedom cake or the equality cake so the custom was preserved and today the Bakers and pastry Chef’s Union brings an enormous one to the Ila Palace maybe 1 and a half meters in diameter it’s really very big

And like you say there’s no charm so no one gets to be king nine thank you very much for talking us through the history of laet De you’re welcome it was a pleasure every year in France competitions are held across the country to decide on the

Best galet DEA this year it was the deont tum in the greater Paris region which won the coveted title we’re here to find out whether or not the title was well Deserved Yes Men your head Baker here at the DuPont tum firstly a big congratulations to you on winning this year’s coveted prize now last year you came second what did you change this year to make your recipe the winning recipe compared to last year I didn’t change anything in the recipe because I

Was so close to winning first place so this time I focused more on perfecting the baking of the gallet as well as the scoring the pattern we draw on top so for the puff pastry I stuck with the inverted type and for the filling is the same

Recipe now you spoke about puff pastry before of course that’s a key ingredient to the for the G what’s the secret to a good puff pastry for a delicious and foolproof puff pastry it’s better to use an inverted puff pastry unlike the traditional pastry where we encase the

Butter in the dough in inverted puff pastry we encase the dough in the butter we roll it out Fold It Roll it out again Fold It creating successive layers of butter and dough the most challenging part is working with it because the butter quickly returns to room temperature so not

Everyone might be able to use this technique now last year we saw a real increase Yasmin in the prices of the galet DEA notably because of energy prices raw materials has the price of the G de increased again this year yes prices have soared this year as

Well that’s why the gallet that won the prize cost €65 it’s for 10 people but that’s the price you pay for Quality it’s mainly due to the rise in energy costs butter is expensive almond powder is also a luxury product and labor costs have also increased for us independent Bakers

Daily life has become very expensive however for the industrial producers they buy in large quantities tons and they can get a discount but for us it’s different we feel the crunch of inflation and it does impact our prices now your G de is made on site it’s

Homemade if you will not all gallet de are made on site can you tell the difference between those that are perhaps sold in the supermarkets and those that are made in B leries like yours supermarkets and large retailers work with lowcost raw materials therefore it’s a lesser quality there’s a standardization of

Galletes because they largely use machines whereas in artisanal work we do everything by hand except for pastry rolling we no longer use rolling pins but we use machines called laminators so that makes all the difference not all our galletes will be identical but it’s about craftsmanship and the French knowhow striving to

Deliver the best quality every day now we promised our viewers that you’d give us a cooking lesson to show us how you make your excellent G de shall we give it a try pleasure let’s go to make a gallet I need minimum 3 days to knead and score scoring means drawing patterns on

The gallet I need that time because inverse puff pastry is a slightly more complicated technique you need to prepare the butter and the dough beforehand for the layers we alternate butter and dough to achieve a beautiful puff pastry [Applause] now I’ll take my Piping Bag and fill the center of the disc with frangipane cream which is a mix of almonds butter we use good quality butter for the puff pastry and the Almond cream there’s also sugar eggs and a small amount of pastry cream to lighten the filling

Starting from the center I make a spiral of franie pan and let’s not forget the traditional lucky charm we place it on the edge never in the center it would be a shame to cut into it so we keep it away from the center so it remains a surprise until the End I care carefully push out the air from the gallet to gradually seal these two parts and then I’ll pop the the gallet into the fridge for at least an Hour next I’ll proceed with the marking to create patterns on the top of the gallet drawing the beautiful design that helped us win the contest this step takes a bit longer usually if I make a diamond shaped design as in traditional galletes it takes about 30 seconds per gallet but

This one will take me 5 Minutes and to finish I Mark the edges It’s the final touch and now the gallette is ready for baking wow look at that it looks absolutely delicious thank you very much indeed thank you but those of you at home watching France and focus thank you for watching time now to taste this Galla

It’s a pastry that’s synonymous with the month of January in France. At the start of every year the “galette des rois”, or king cake, fills bakeries across the country and there’s one to suit everyone’s taste. In this show, we find out more about the origins of this French culinary tradition which, contrary to popular belief, doesn’t date back to the Three Kings but to the Saturnalia feasts in ancient Rome. We also take you to the bakery that won this year’s title for best galette in the greater Paris area. Yasmine Menacer, its head pastry chef, gives us some of her baking tips. 

Read more about this story in our article: https://f24.my/A2D3.y

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