To start this new article, I’ll give you a glue… In your opinion, when did the first French pastry made by men go back? If you tell me at the beginning of the 19th century when the famous Antonin Carême perfected the puff pastry recipe, you are not there. You will see that greed it’s nothing new…!
French pastry: a place of caloric debauchery?
How well do you know your energy needs? The body’s energy consumption is the sum of 5 main types of calorie expenditure :
In fact, what characterizes French pastry in the first place is the addition of a sweet ingredient to the basic bread recipe, that is to say flour and water.
And if we stick to this definition, it was in the Neolithic Age that men began to add cereals rich in sugar such as corn or wheat to the recipe for bread. The beginnings French pastry!
So it does not date from yesterday, and over the centuries the recipes have been refined, enriched and diversified. We added fats, milk, eggs, fruit and, of course, always more sugar!
French pastry: Types of dough
Then, what also characterizes French pastry are the types of dough that are used: there are yeast doughs, with yeast, like brioche dough, dry dough which is richer in fat such as shortcrust pastry or shortbread, and finally soft doughs which include beaten eggs, as for the madeleines.
The real problem with French pastry is that it is extremely difficult to compare them between them because the recipes have nothing to do with each other. A slice of apple pie has nothing to do with a chocolate nun that has nothing to do with a pound cake either …
So it is difficult to know a priori what to choose for a dessert.
What we can do, however, when we are at the supermarket, is compare the products which correspond to the same name.
The caloric value of a madeleine? Up to 450 Kcal / 100 g!
Take for example the madeleines. We will find different types of madeleines, the compositions of which we will be able to study carefully as indicated in the following table:
We realize for example that egg quality chosen but also their quantity are very different.
This is a first indicator: there are extra-fresh eggs, or even normal whole eggs, which represents between 12.3 and 20% of the total ingredients. Result: nutritionally, it has nothing to do with it …
My advice for a good French pastry is to always favor products that contain the most natural ingredients like eggs and milk in their recipe.
The products I call “Natural” these are the ones you might find in your cupboards or refrigerator. And when you see components as suspicious as glucose-fructose syrup as is the case in the table, especially go your way …
Another example: the industrial pound cake
Now that you have understood the principle, I suggest you, as a practical exercise, to compare several industrial pound cake.
It is an easy product to analyze because the original recipe is written in its name: a traditional pound cake is 1/4 of flour, 1/4 of butter, 1/4 of sugar and 1/4 of eggs. . So four quarters in all.
Breton friends shared this painting with me:
From there, if you see as in the comparison table that on some labels there is much more sugar than butter or eggs, or if the butter is non-existent and has been replaced by a vegetable oil, you can easily unmask deceptions.
So when you pick up a pound cake at the supermarket, my advice is to trust more the composition which is closest to the original recipe.
Fresh pastries VS frozen pastries
To finish this pastry analysis, I suggest that you take an interest in the nutritional values of pastries depending, this time, on their method of conservation: fresh pastries compared to frozen pastries.
There are very big differences, so it will allow you to make your choices with full knowledge of the facts.
Take a good look at this table:
I distinguished 3 classic categories : on the one hand, chocolate or cream pastries, then fruit pies and desserts, finally soft pastries such as cakes, pound cake, gingerbread, madeleines, and others …
What we immediately notice is that fruit pies are really a lot less caloric than other pastries. And you can notice with the circled numbers that you can go from single to double in fat between a fresh chocolate cream and a frozen fruit pie.
Then, fresh products are systematically more caloric than frozen products. For an eclair or religious type chocolate pastry, this varies by 20% and the explanation often lies in the amount of sugar used.
We actually use a lot less sugar for frozen industrial preparations as for fresh pastries. Surprising, isn’t it?
To conclude, I will not advise you, for obvious reasons (and especially if you are in a period of weight loss), to consume pastries too often, it must remain an exceptional product reserved for special occasions such as parties, birthdays or family meals.
Try as much as possible to prepare your pastries at home, you will have better control over the amounts of sugar and salt, and you will be sure of the quality and origin of the butter.
Last tip, for pound cake or fruit pies (the latter being the best choice), do not hesitate to cut smaller portions, it gives the same pleasure and you avoid certain unfortunate consequences …
I’ll let you watch my video, it will help you make your choices better when you go to a French pastry shop.
