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France and the Alps · Volume 11, Butter, Cider and the Buckwheat Line

Far breton

Brittany

Far breton, a dense custardy baked cake studded with prunes: a thick slice of a dense, custardy golden brown baked cake studded with dark purple prune halves, its top deeply caramelised and slightly domed.

Illustration

Time
20 minutes

First recorded in the 18th century as a flour-based porridge eaten alongside meat, not as a dessert; the name comes from Breton farz forn, far baked in the oven. Prunes, now near-universal in the dish, arrived by an unusually specific trade route: Breton cod fishermen working months-long voyages to Newfoundland, the Terre-Neuvas, traded fish for prunes, a Southwest French speciality, bringing the fruit home into Breton kitchens this way rather than by any local orchard tradition.

As tradition built it

Serves 6. 20 minutes at 220°C, then 30 at 180°C.

Ingredients

  • 400 g prunes
  • 250 g flour
  • 250 g sugar
  • 1 pinch salt
  • 4 large eggs
  • 1 litre whole raw milk
  • a splash rum
  • 30 g salted butter, for the dish

Method

  1. Heat the oven to 220°C.
  2. Wash the prunes and soak them in warm water while you make the batter.
  3. Sift the flour and mix it with the sugar and salt. Make a well, add the eggs and mix.
  4. Whisk in the milk a little at a time until smooth. Add the rum.
  5. Butter a baking dish and lay the prunes on the bottom. Pour the batter over.
  6. Bake 20 minutes, then lower the oven to 180°C and bake 30 minutes more.
  7. Let it cool in the dish and serve it just warm.

Notes

No specific historical recipe with fixed quantities survives in the sourcing; the dish's structure is well attested, the exact ratios are not.

The recipe is KerJeanne's, a pâtisserie in Belz, Morbihan, since 1963. Morbihan Tourisme's version uses buckwheat flour, 100 g sugar and 100 g melted butter in the batter, stirs the prunes in, rests it 4 hours, and bakes 40 minutes at 200°C.

What a modern chef changes

Prunes macerated in Calvados, a steady Big Green Egg bake, and a chinois-passed batter

Method

  1. Macerate the prunes in a little warmed Calvados before baking, following the same cider-and-apple-spirit logic that runs through the rest of the Norman half of this volume, a genuine cross-regional pairing rather than an imported flourish, since prunes and Calvados both already belong to this coast's own pantry.
  2. Bake at a lower, longer, more stable heat than a standard oven gives, using the Big Green Egg's own steady indirect setting, for a properly set, custardy interior without the dry, over-browned edge a hotter domestic oven tends to produce on a dish this simple.
  3. Pass the batter through a chinois before baking, catching any unbeaten egg strand, for the smooth, dense set the dish is actually known for.
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