Verified in 3 cities.
Pain d'épices is Dijon's dense honey and spice bread, fragrant with anise, cinnamon and clove, sold in loaves and as nonnettes, small round cakes of pain d'épices filled with jam; in France we have verified places to eat it in Dijon, Reims and Strasbourg.
Pain d'épices is Dijon's dense honey and spice bread, fragrant with anise, cinnamon and clove, sold in loaves and as nonnettes, small round cakes of pain d'épices filled with jam.
Spiced honey bread is an ancient food, and Dijon tradition credits Margaret of Flanders, wife of Duke Philip the Bold, with bringing its ancestor to the ducal court. By the 20th century the city counted twelve gingerbread houses. Mulot et Petitjean, founded in 1796 and trading from Place Bossuet since 1805, is now the last of them, and moved production to Boulevard de l'Ouest in 1912. Besides loaves it makes nonnettes, small round pain d'épices filled with jam, from blackcurrant to orange.
Where to eat in Dijon:
Where to eat Pain d'épices in Dijon: the editor picks
Pain d'épices de Reims is a dense spiced loaf of rye flour and three kinds of honey, meadow, pale and buckwheat, and the Reims name is reserved for gingerbread made with rye.
Reims bakers began spicing honey bread around the 14th century and were given the name pâtissiers de pain d'épices; the city's is held to be the oldest recorded mention of the trade. The pain d'épices makers asserted their monopoly on 2 August 1571 and founded a guild that Henri IV recognised in 1596, and the Reims aldermen offered pain d'épices to Louis XV at his coronation in 1722. Before the Revolution the city had only twelve master makers, and the number halved under the First Empire.
Where to eat in Reims:
Where to eat Pain d'épices de Reims in Reims: the editor picks
Alsatian gingerbread: a dense, dark honey-and-rye loaf spiced with cinnamon, anise and clove, sliced thin at tea time or baked into the Christmas market's biscuits and figures.
Pain d'epices, honey spice bread, has deep roots in Alsace, with the nearby village of Gertwiller styling itself the capital of gingerbread. Built on honey and rye flour and warmed with anise, cinnamon and clove, it keeps for weeks and scents the air of the Christkindelsmarik. It appears as loaves, as glazed figures and as the spiced biscuits sold from December stalls. Pastry houses bake it year-round, but it belongs above all to the Strasbourg winter.
Where to eat in Strasbourg:
Where to eat Pain d'epices in Strasbourg: the editor picks
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