€ 59 for a frangipane galette for six to eight people sold in Lenôtre pastry shops.
Who says better ?
It's a fact: now, to win kings, you often have to break the bank.
“It's expensive to produce,” explains Serge Sandzer, at the head of the small organic Patibio factory, which supplies the Biocoop and Naturalia brands in particular.
Making puff pastry is a real skill.
No less than 40% of the cost of the cake goes to the payroll.
"To judge, it suffices to observe Moussa Kanoute, his pastry chef, perform the turns and half-turns of the dough, pass it through the dough sheeter, respect the rest times, cut the circles of dough by hand ..." In a mechanized factory, it costs nothing, adds the boss.
There is a machine, a person at the beginning and a person at the end.
"
Over € 1.60 for the bean, the crown and the box
And the raw material?
It represents for him 26% of the cost of the cake.
"And half the price of the raw food material goes into butter," says the baker.
€ 7.90 per kilo of organic churned butter compared to around € 3 if we used a low-end product without a label.
»To this, we must add an essential ingredient: the bean.
Count 80 cents for a grigri made in France.
Plus the prices of the crown and the box, we climb to € 1.65 per cake, regardless of the size of the cake.
Retail, at Naturalia, the Patibio frangipane for 4 people is sold € 15.49…
But once in the store, there is another parameter that can explain the high price of the pancake… “It's true that we will be able to sell a little more, explains Anselme Blaynay, the owner of the quality bakery Ten Belles. , in Paris.
We sell the classic pancake of eight portions 36 €.
Eight to nine times the cost of ingredients and labor.
For comparison, the coefficient is only 6 or 7 on a cookie.
Here again, however, it should be remembered that a pastry chef is much more involved in the production of the puff pastry.
Good buttered taste is a key criterion
And taste question: is there a real difference depending on the price of the pancake and where we bought it?
To find out, we had 4 frangipanes blind tested by pastry chef Nina Métayer.
The former member of Jean-François Piège's team has just launched his own online pastry shop, Délicatisserie.
“It lacks the buttery taste a bit,” she says of Patibio's galette, which still contains 130 g in its 4-person format!
Obviously, the flavor of the precious fat is an essential criterion for judging a good frangipane: "There, we have a buttery taste," she exclaims, still blindfolded, when she has just finished. take a bite out of the creation of Benoît Castel, a renowned Parisian artisan baker.
It is very good.
The pancake bought in a neighborhood bakery is distinguished by an unpleasant taste of bitter almond aroma.
And that of La Brioche Dorée too ... "There is something round, all the same, you smell butter in this one", continues the pastry chef like a gimmick.
Nina Métayer finally classifies the cakes according to the buttery sensation they gave her: Benoît Castel (€ 32 for a 6 person pancake) comes first, followed by La Brioche Dorée (€ 18.50), and Patibio (15.49 €) and the neighborhood bakery (€ 16).
"This one deserves its price, launches the taster, pointing to the galette of Benoît Castel.
If I were him, I would even sell her for more!
"
Verdict: "It is better to spend a few euros more to have a good product".
And if you want to get your money's worth, a word of advice: as the cost of the bean, the crown and the labor is almost identical regardless of the size of the cake, opt for the large formats instead!
