Gateau Breton
- 1 pound all-purpose flour
- 1 pound sugar (1/2 pound powdered sugar and 1/2 pound granulated sugar), sifted
- 1 pound salted butter
- 10 egg yolks
- 1 tablespoon dark rum ("for respect" my teacher said)
- 1 teaspoon vanilla powder
- 1 egg
- 1 teaspoon water
- Place the flour on the counter and make a well.
- Cut up the butter and place the sifted sugars, butter, yolks, rum, and vanilla powder in the well.
- Work the well together.
- Work in the flour then "fraisage" the dough, pushing it away from you on the counter with the heel of your hand.
- This helps schmear the butter into thin layers to make the cake flakey in the end.
- Chill the dough 30 minutes.
- Preheat the oven to 360 degrees F.
- Butter an 8-inch cake pan and line the bottom with parchment and butter the paper.
- Roll the dough out on a lightly floured surface to an 8-inch disk about 1/2-inch thick.
- Flip it over onto your hand and brush off the excess flour then place it in the pan.
- Brush the top with egg wash; then egg wash it again to get a thicker coating.
- Using a knife, decorate it with the traditional cross-hatching, or for restaurant presentation you carve a map of Brittany on the surface and do some angled lines all around the edge.
- Bake until golden brown, about 30 to 40 minutes.
- Let cool in the pan and serve in wedges.
- I kept this recipe in the original metric measurements I was taught it in to show the relationship between the ingredients.
- Quatre-Quarts (meaning "four quarters") is a French cake shaped like a rectangle and all the ingredients (butter, sugar, flour, and eggs-oooo that would make a good book title, don't you think?)
- are of equal weights.
- My teacher, Chef Claude at La Varenne said you weigh the eggs and then match that measurement with the other ingredients.
- If you look this up in the dictionary, Quarte-quarts translates to pound cake, the American version of a pound of 4 equal ingredients, but with air whipped in for leavening.
- This cake is dense and buttery with a big crumb, more like a shortbread than a cake.
- You can do the mixing in a food processor but this recipe is the traditional way.
flour, sugar, butter, egg yolks, dark rum, vanilla powder, egg, water
Taken from www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/gateau-breton-recipe.html (may not work)