Pralines rose de Lyon

I’ve been vaguely aware of these traditionally Lyonnaise treats but never really made a point of familiarizing myself with them and how they might be used in the baking and pastry world. I don’t really recall seeing them used during my pastry training at Le Cordon Bleu Paris but that doesn’t mean there weren’t any lurking around.

These things are EVERYwhere in Lyon! Basically pink-red tinged sugar coated almonds, my first taste of a morsel from the sac on the right (from C-Gastronomie, a shop just around the corner from our AirBnB) was less then exciting - too sweet, kind of soft and not crunchy and crisp as I had expected. Remember French burnt peanuts? I used to love those!

Me being me, I had to buy another bag to make a comparison. The sac on the left is from Paul Bocuse’s shop at Lyon’s foodie nirvana, Les Halles de Paul Bocuse - other then different words on the ribbon and package, they look exactly the same. My side by side tasting indicated they were indeed the same. My cross section showed me that the almond inside is about the same size and the coating about the same thickness. There must be a large production facility somewhere that churns these babies out.

I was more intrigued by the pastries that are made using these pralines rose than the candy itself. We’ve seen MANY shops selling praline rose tartes, sablés et brioche de St-Genix all of which incorporate them into the final product.

Where to start. My first trial was from Boulangerie Ferriandière just a few blocks down from our AirBnB. We went in to purchase a loaf of bread (delicious by the way) and there I saw both individual brioches with pralines rose and larger brioches de St.-Genix. I went for the single. Not much to look at really.

I must admit that brioche in general can be pretty boring - I was hoping for the best. Check out the inside.

Hmmmmm . . . . not much going on in the praline rose department

I was right - it had little to recommend it from the praline standpoint. I found only a few small pieces of praline and the brioche itself was dry. I admit this was a pathetic attempt at investigation into the brioche side of things. Typically I take all my own photos but this time here’s a Wikipedia image of the larger version - it at least gives you sense of it. We saw a number of people strolling around with these, tearing pieces off as they went. Hmmm. . .

Credit to Wikipedia for this photo

Next - Steve and I returned to Les Halles de Paul Bocuse and spied a number of tartes à la praline rose from the likes of P.B.’s and Richard Sève’s pâtisseries. We purchased a couple of individual tartes for tasting purposes.

Paul Bocuse version

I did some research on the making of said tartes. Sève’s site/recipe (in French) claims that they make “la Véritable Tarte à la praline”. Here’s the link to the recipe in French - very detailed. They highlight the fact that they make their own pralines rose in copper equipment, coating them and then crushing them just so for their tartes.

The tarte process: in a nutshell it consists of a blind baked pâte sucrée crust and a filling made with equal weights (200-250 g each for a 8-9” tarte) of crushed/chopped pralines rose and heavy cream plus vanilla. Bring the cream with the seeds from one vanilla bean to a boil, then stir in the crushed pralines and let cook about 5-10 minutes. Pour that into your cooled blind baked crust and bake for 5 minutes at 200ºC. Let cool and refrigerate overnight before serving. Sounds pretty straight forward, right?

If you want to make your own pralines rose, you first roast the almonds then coat them in sugar syrup that has a red coloring added. The nuts ultimately become coated with a hard sugar coating to create the outer shell. As I read about the process, it’s not unlike caramelizing hazelnuts and almonds to make praliné paste used in many pastry applications.

Of course, if you wish to purchase already made pralines rose, Sève recommends theirs. Bien sur! But . . . . when we looked at the shop to buy a bag of their’s - none to be had!

Let’s talk tarte tasting! The appearance of les tartes à la praline rose from the two shops is quite different as is easily seen below. Bocuse’s tart shell is deeper and the filling is smoother and less chunky while Sève’s shell is more shallow and full of praline pieces.

As I cut into each, the texture of Bocuse’s filling is thicker, almost custard like, while Sève’s is thinner and more jammy/chunky. Bocuse’s crust is snappy and crisp while Sève’s is softer in texture.

Over all Steve and I preferred Bocuse’s version. The crust certainly won me over and the filling had a lovely unctuousness without being too sweet.

Now for the big question - will I make this when we get home?? We’ll see. I’d love to reproduce the Bocuse filling but not necessarily with the red coloring. I’m very curious about the simple mixture of finely chopped caramelized nuts and heavy cream as a filling. Hmmm . . . . maybe I’ll pursue it. Time will tell.