So Hot Right Now: Millefeuille, the Butteriest, Flakiest French Pastry (2024)

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So Hot Right Now: Millefeuille, the Butteriest, Flakiest French Pastry? ›

A mille-feuille (French: [mil fœj]; lit. 'thousand-sheets'), also known by the names Napoleon in North America, vanilla slice in the United Kingdom, and custard slice, is a French dessert made of puff pastry layered with pastry cream.

A mille-feuille (French: [mil fœj]; lit. 'thousand-sheets'), also known by the names Napoleon in North America, vanilla slice in the United Kingdom, and custard slice, is a French dessert made of puff pastry layered with pastry cream.

The History of Mille-Feuille

In 1651, chef François Pierre de la Varenne published the mille-feuille recipe in Le Cuisinier François. This was one of the earliest French cookbooks, and also included early recipes for the use of roux and béchamel sauce. It was later perfected by Antonin Carême.

How do you eat a mille-feuille? If you want to eat it in a less messy way, turn your mille feuille on its side and cut it from what is the top now. It does depend on the actual make up how well it turns and cuts. Or, you can pick each layer of in their hands or, put the layer on the plate and use a knife to cut it.

There are five main types of pastry dough for creating pastries: flaky, shortcrust, puff, choux and filo. All of them are made primarily from flour, water and fat. However, these five types of pastry dough each have slightly different core ingredients, different ratios of ingredients and, ultimately, different uses.

A vanilla slice is usually a very thick slab of custard sandwiched between two thin puff sheets. A mille feuille is more decorative, could have multiple custard (or diplomat cream) layers and looks very sophisticated. It is one of the simplest things you can make with a puff sheet, yet looks so elegant!

Standing tall with at least eight tiers (and sometimes more than 20) of alternating layers of pastry and custard, the Napoleon cake has become a national Russian dish, inspired by the French mille-feuille.

However, it is believed to have originated in France during the 18th century. One popular theory is that the Mille-Feuilles was inspired by a traditional Italian pastry known as "mille foglie" (thousand layers), which consists of layers of puff pastry filled with cream or custard.

The baguette is one of France's most-loved loaves and is eaten throughout the day. Baguettes can be eaten as early as breakfast time—often toasted, buttered, and dunked in coffee. It's a source of carbohydrates and the fiber necessary to start the day off right! Fruit jam can also be added for an extra treat.

Serve the Mille-Feuille

Carefully transfer the trimmed mille-feuille to a serving dish and refrigerate again if not serving immediately, or cut into individual portions to serve. Enjoy.

How do French people serve bread? ›

Directly on the table, though, is where the bread is placed in France. Except when dining in upscale restaurants, where you'll not only get a bread plate, but you'll get butter, too. (Bread is meant to accompany a meal and sop up sauce, it's not a separate course, so butter isn't usually served with bread in France.

Flaky pastry, also known as quick pastry, blitz pastry or rough puff, is a light and thin unleavened pastry that is similar to, but distinct from, puff pastry.

Pâtisserie is used to describe French pastries and the pastry shop they are sold in. Although the word is used quite liberally in English-speaking countries, in France and Belgium the law restricts its use to bakeries who employ licensed maître pâtissier (master pastry chefs).

The chouquettes are these small choux pastries sprinkled with some pearl sugar. A very easy recipe indeed, that we usually buy at the bakery gathered in small paper bags that we happily open on the way home, trying to grab the last pearl sugars that fell down in the bottom of the bag.

a thousand ⧫ one thousand.

It translates to a thousand leaves (but you could also translate feuille as layers or sheets) but in short, this is a pastry made of countless super-thin layers of pastry.

1. leaf. des feuilles mortes fallen leaves. 2. sheet.