Delicately sweet and intensely spicy, French pain d’épices, gingerbread, is simply gorgeous. And it keeps for ever, so you can make it in early December with the view of Christmas – if it lasts that long.
Panda piss
What can I say? The delectable French gingerbread is known in my house and amongst friends as ‘panda piss’. If you say ‘pain d’épices’ several times quickly, without a trace of proper French pronunciation or accent, you’ll see why.
In spite of this less than charming moniker, it is a revered bake with everyone I’ve served it to. And with good reason: it is fragrant with spices, moist with honey and savoury enough to be eaten for breakfast, buttered and spread with more honey.
It is nowhere near as sweet as for instance Polish piernik, which is based on the French original. It is less sweet than German Lebkuchen, English gingerbread cakes or Scandinavian honningkake/kage. It is, quite simply, a refined and sophisticated product.
As ancient as pain d’épices
Pain d’épices probably has roots in the ancient Egyptian and Roman honey cakes, as discovered by archaeologists and still good to eat. That’s a joke, but honey has such excellent preserving qualities it makes pain d’épices keep well if not better for weeks.
This bread is likely to have been brought to Europe from the east: in China they baked wheat and honey breads as far back as 10th century. It could have travelled west with Genghis Khan to the Middle East, and into France with the crusaders in 12th and 13th century.
Spice bread
Pain d’épices literally means ‘spice bread’ and it is beautifully spiced indeed. The spice mix recipe is not set in stone: in many countries a gingerbread spice mix is available to buy, like the English mixed spice or the German Lebkuchengewürtz.
It’s nicer and more interesting to combine your own though, using fresh spices and making it inimitable. However, make sure there’s ginger and star anise in the mix: that’s what will give the bread a festive, Christmassy flavour.
It is also more of a proper bread rather than cake, unlike what the Americans call ‘bread’ but is in fact a loaf cake, be it banana or coconut.
Pain d’épices as I already said is bread-style savoury: you would never guess it contains almost a pound of honey. I have no idea how, but the honey seems to lose its sugary qualities and instead give the bread just a lovely texture, heft and long shelf life.
And in the perfect albeit ethically suspect combo, the French serve it as a base for cubes of foie gras.
Rye flour addition is traditional and it enhances the flavour and ‘breadiness’ by giving it a nutty, earthy taste. And for the ultimate experience, try spreading it with homemade date butter.
How to make this French gingerbread
And on top of it all, it’s fabulously easy to make. You won’t need an electric mixer, just a saucepan and a bowl. It’s not cheap though, because the better quality the honey, the tastier the bread and good honey is expensive.
You can happily use set honey for this recipe because it will be warmed up in a saucepan with the brown sugar, in order to melt the latter which won’t take long or require the honey to get very hot. So almost straight away it can be mixed with lightly beaten eggs and milk, to complete the wet part of the recipe.
The dry ingredients are mixed in a bowl, with both flours, all the spices, baking powder and orange zest. And then the two need to be combined but lightly, so that the flour is all incorporated but the batter is still quite lumpy and not overmixed.
It is prudent to use a loaf tin lined with parchment, for insulation and ease of extraction.
Pain d’épices bakes for about an hour, then cools for longer before it can be wrapped in foil and stored until the following day. And it gets better the longer it sits.
Recipes for pain d’épices
I have trawled through and tested various French and English recipes and the winning one is both, as it’s Richard Bertinet’s, the French baker living and working in the UK (with a notable mention of Sunday Baker).
Some recipes feature only honey (only! haha! considering the amount!), but I like the small addition of brown sugar for the molasses-like hint of flavour.
More gingerbread recipes
Sticky cranberry gingerbread cake with molasses and maple syrup. Easy to make, sweet, spicy and tart, it's just perfect for the festive season.
Gingerbread cake with marmalade or jam filling and maple syrup glaze. This is an easy recipe for traditional gingerbread cake, sticky and spicy, with stem or crystallised ginger pieces. The perfect holiday or pre-holiday cake and it’s stupidly easy to bake.
This is the best and easiest recipe for lebkuchen or gingerbread cookies. Traditional lebkuchen recipe, for gingerbreads covered with lemon icing and coated in chocolate. Lebkuchen are honeyed and spiced biscuits and great fun to ice and decorate.
More French bread recipes
Buttery and barely sweet brioche, home baked breakfast fit for a king. Paper-thin glossy crust and the softest, meltiest crumb hiding inside, waiting only for a lick of good jam.
Pompe à huile, sweet olive oil brioche traditionally served in Provence, South-East France, at Christmas. With orange flavour and a strange name (‘oil pump’), it’s one of 13 Provençal Christmas desserts.
Pain de mie is a white sandwich loaf with soft crust baked in a special Pullman tin. Pain de mie, white with a small addition of wholemeal flour makes a tasty sandwich loaf.