My favorite breakfast

In my humble, American, opinion, the French have an odd relationship with breakfast. It seems to barely count as a meal. The typical menu contains coffee and a pastry and maybe, maybe a yogurt. Even the name makes breakfast seem insignificant; in French, it is le petit dejeuner, as compared to lunch, which is huge and crowned with the name dejeuner. Breakfast seems to just be a placeholder to tide you over until lunch.

I find that a crying shame, since I love breakfast and the baker in me bows to French breakfast pastries as royalty amongst baked goods, requiring great knowledge and skill to accomplish. They taste really, really good, too.

There is of course the croissant, which I will probably never again be able to eat sullied with chicken salad. This is the basis and originator of all the rest, with its layers of butter carefully enrobed in a slightly sweetened yeasted dough. There is the pain au chocolat, or croissant pastry wrapped around two sticks of dark chocolate. There are variations folded around apricots, and even occasionally with ham and cheese, though I feel that savory variations are due to foreign influence. There are the choussons aux pommes, or something rather like a pie crust that somehow has far more structure in the hand, full of sweetened applesauce. There are the brioches, the queens of enriched doughs, and the tartines, fresh baguettes spread with butter or honey or the lovely fruit jams available here.



And then, hiding shame-facedly in the corner, are the pastries shown above, looking burnt and old and rather like a tree branch trying to pass itself off as a pastry under a heavy coating of powdered sugar. Next to the fresh and pristine baked goods on every side, in a French bakery where visual perfection in elaborate desserts in the norm, one wonders how the baker ever allowed these out of the kitchen.

If that dichotomy right there doesn't clue you in that something is up, by all means, pass over these unappealing pastries. More for me.

For these are les croissants aux amandes, the heart-warming tale of how day-old croissants are given a second chance and converted into something far greater. For these, old croissants are split in half, filled with creme d'amande or frangipane, drenched in a sugar syrup and topped with more of the almond goodness, and then baked again. Hiding under the powdered sugar and wooden exterior, is the lovely flavor of almonds and soft, buttery, sweet pastry. There is even a pain au chocolate aux amandes where the same treatment has been applied to day-old pain au chocolats.

Of course, the production of these uglies is unpredictable, for if the bakery sold all their croissants the day before there will be no croissants aux amandes this day. They also sell out rather quickly. But on those lovely Saturday morning when you wake up early and can wander through a quiet little French town smelling the yeast and baking bread from bakers who've been at work for hours just as everyone else begins to rise, these are waiting for you when you buy your baguettes.

Enjoy!