‘There’s a next level’: 10 more delicious French pastries to try

By Jen Rose Smith, CNN

(CNN) — For travelers stepping into their first Parisian pâtisserie, a few of the treats on offer might already be familiar — some famous French pastries have long since entered the world’s collective culinary lexicon.

“Everyone knows macarons, croissants and pains au chocolat,” said Gale Gand, an American pastry chef and television personality who studied at La Varenne Cooking School in Paris. “But there’s so much more than that. There’s a next level.”

The hefty cookbook “The Art of French Baking,” recently released by Phaidon and adapted from a pair of classic 1930s tomes by Ginette Mathiot, has more than 350 recipes, including little-known treats from the simple puff-pastry fingers allumettes glacées to Visitandines, tiny almond cakes invented by nuns.

Regions like Brittany and Bordeaux have their own distinctive baking traditions, with buttery treats that come shaped like bicycle wheels or coated in beeswax. Among the fairytale mountain villages of Alsace, where it’s still possible to hear old Germanic dialects, the sky-high, ring-shaped kugelhopf hints at a history of intermingling French and German cultures.

“We’ve got the basics down,” said Gand. “It’s time to expand our repertoire.”

Here are some of the essential French pastries to try next. What sweet treats did we miss? Share your favorites in the comments below.

Kouign Amann

Farms and dairies in rain-lush Brittany produce some of the finest butter in France, which is the defining ingredient of a perfect kouign amann — a layered, yeasted pastry whose name, in the Breton language, translates to “butter cake.” (It’s pronounced “queen uh-man.”)

The coastal town of Douarnenez, where the kouign amann was invented in the 1860s, is the object of pilgrimages for aficionados of the deeply caramelized dessert. Today it’s home to a professional association of artisans dedicated to producing authentic versions of kouign amann — like the golden pastries filling the cases of Pascal Jaïn, a bakery overseen by the president of the association.

Religieuse

France might be an adamantly secular state, but its pastry shops like to flirt with religion. Sweets inspired by nuns range from the gingerbread nonettes, or “little nuns,” to the feather-light fried choux buns known as pets-de-nonnes: nuns’ farts.

The religieuse — which also translates to “nun” — is a bit more literal. The dessert stacks two cream-filled choux buns into mini towers baptized with a dollop of sweet glaze. Some say it resembles a pope’s towering mitre; others see the adorably round-bottomed shape of a chubby nun.

You can find an old-school religieuse in nearly any Parisian bakery, and creative variations abound. For a modern twist, visit the city’s Carl Marletti for choux buns baked with a crunchy craquelin coating and plump with rose-flavored cream.

Cannelé

Baked in fluted copper molds coated in beeswax and butter, the cannelé looks deceptively simple — in reality, the sweet originating in Bordeaux takes days to make.

Its thin batter of milk, eggs, flour, sugar and butter rests for up to 48 hours before baking in a scorching-hot oven. The resulting pastry, exemplified by rum-and-vanilla scented versions sold at Bordeaux pastry shop Baillardran, has a custard-like texture and mahogany exterior.

They make a tempting souvenir, but don’t try to slip them in your suitcase. The delicacies are best eaten while they’re still warm.

Paris-Brest

First held in 1891, the Paris-Brest-Paris is the world’s oldest long-distance cycling race, with a grueling 1,200-kilometer course and its own signature pastry: the Paris-Brest.

It starts with a ring of airy choux pastry baked in the shape of a bicycle wheel, then filled with praline-flavored cream and topped with a constellation of sliced almonds. The dessert was invented in 1910 by pastry chef Louis Durand, whose family’s bakery in Maisons-Laffitte, Maison Durand, still serves a Paris-Brest using the original recipe.

Today, bakers across France riff on the classic by adding everything from tahini to cherries and peanuts. In Paris, beloved renditions include individual-sized chocolate-praline Paris-Brest at Maison Philippe Conticini, as well as the exquisite dark-chocolate Paris-Brest made by celebrity pâtissier Pierre Hermé.

Pithiviers

Visitors exploring the Loire Valley commune of Pithiviers might not realize they are standing in the hometown of one of France’s greatest desserts — until they spot the eponymous sweet that has pride of place in its bakery windows.

According to legend, the pithiviers has its roots in the first century, when Gauls combined local flour with almonds brought by Roman traders.

The modern sweet with the closest ties to that ancient recipe is the pithiviers fondant, a glazed almond cake.

But the best-known version across France is the pithiviers feuilleté, two disks of airy puff pastry sandwiching a soft almond filling and adorned with a curving sunburst of scored lines. You can try both at the artisanal pastry shop À la Renommée.

Far Breton

Not every great French dessert is feather-light: take the creamy and fruit-filled far Breton, a homey specialty in Brittany.

Somewhere between a cake and a custard, the ultra-classic take is studded with prunes soaked in Armagnac brandy.

It’s the kind of thing a home cook could whip up in an afternoon, but it’s also a serious business among Breton bakers. Each year they go head-to-head in the Concours du Meilleur Far Breton aux Pruneaux, the “best Far Breton with prunes” competition.

You can try last year’s winning recipe — featuring locally milled flour, half-salted butter and Agen prunes — at Maison Coeur, a pastry shop that’s steps from the medieval Château de Combourg.

Saint-Honoré

Named for Honoratus of Amiens, the patron saint of bakers and pastry chefs, the Saint-Honoré is French pâtisserie at its most theatrical.

A disc of puff pastry forms the base; a ring of choux is piped around its edge; caramel-dipped cream puffs crowd the top. Then, the whole construction is filled with crème chiboust — a gossamer blend of pastry cream and Italian meringue.

The resulting confection is equal parts crisp, tender and lush. If you’re heading to Paris, sample the exquisitely traditional rendition served at Stohrer, a shop founded in 1730 by a pastry chef to King Louis XV.

Gâteau Basque

As the most famous dessert from southwest France’s Basque region, Gâteau Basque is more than a sweet — it’s an icon of an ancient culture with its own language and traditions.

A Gâteau Basque Festival takes place each fall in the town of Cambo-les-Bains; the village of Sare has a Gâteau Basque museum where visitors learn to make their own.

In a way, the name’s a bait-and-switch. This treat is not very cake-like. It’s a tender confection that sandwiches a sweet filling between two layers of soft tart dough.

The two most popular fillings are pastry cream and jam made from the region’s Itxassou black cherries, but don’t just try one. You can do a side-by-side comparison at Maison Adam in the seaside resort of Saint-Jean-de-Luz.

Kugelhopf

A tall, fluted crown of yeast-risen dough studded with raisins, this iconic bake from the eastern region of Alsace hints at a history of shifting borders. Alsace spent centuries moving between French and German rule — explaining why this indisputably French cake so closely resembles similar treats from across the Germanic world.

It’s as rich in lore as it is in butter. Competing tales about the origins of kugelhopf variously feature the three magi, battles at the gates of Vienna and a teenaged Marie Antoinette.

Whichever story you choose, the Alsatian version is a luscious cake-bread hybrid, typically baked in handmade pottery molds from the village of Soufflenheim.

Nearly every bakery in the region offers its own twist, but one award-winning rendition comes from Boulangerie Stephane in the Alsatian town of Morschwiller-le-Bas.

Pastis Gascon

Delicate layers of dough filled with finely sliced apples make the pastis Gascon a frilly retort to the basic apple pie — and a tribute to the culinary traditions of the southwestern region where it’s made.

A crisp exterior yields to tender filling perfumed with Armagnac brandy, a barrel-aged spirit created in Gascony for centuries.

While many recipes call for easy-to-handle commercial phyllo sheets, the most authentic version features labor-intensive hand-stretched dough; find it in traditional bakeries including Les Délices d’Aliénor in the commune of Gimont.

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