{"id":4090,"date":"2012-02-10T12:27:01","date_gmt":"2012-02-10T11:27:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.withaglass.com\/?p=4090"},"modified":"2014-01-30T12:15:36","modified_gmt":"2014-01-30T11:15:36","slug":"far-breton-or-brittany-prune-flan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.withaglass.com\/?p=4090","title":{"rendered":"Far breton, or Brittany Prune Pudding"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"farbretonpp\"Far breton <\/em>is one of my favourite and most frequently baked sweet dishes. It is light and low-fat, but filling, slightly sweet, but tangy, it is best served cold, but perfect even in cold seasons too.\u00a0I wouldn’t only call it irresistible, but also undownputable, just like a fascinating book.\u00a0Far breton<\/em>\u00a0is as easy to prepare as it is impossible to translate. It’s not exactly a cake, nor a custard, nor a flan… Since nothing I have ever tasted has a similar consistency, maybe “a baked, dense, slightly elastic pudding” (in the German sense of the word) would be a good definition.<\/p>\n

As its name suggests,\u00a0far breton<\/em>\u00a0is a Brittany region specialty and a small Breton village bakery shop is the first place where I discovered it .\u00a0Apparently, many centuries ago the dish called far<\/em> was a kind of gruel with dried fruit, and\u00a0far <\/em>is a Latin\u00a0word meaning “wheat” or “spelt” . Afterwards <\/em>the dish\u00a0evolved into the today’s dense pudding-like cake. The oldest written trace of the present form of far breton<\/em> dates back to the XVIIIth century, when both savoury (made from buckwheat and served with meat) and sweet fars<\/em> (usually without any fruit) were popular. Nowadays only the sweet one is very popular not only in Brittany, but all around France.<\/p>\n

Most people prepare it, like me, with prunes, some add only raisins, some both, and some purists refuse any kind of fruit. I find the most popular, slightly tangy version the absolute winner. I think it is best served cold, preferably left overnight in the fridge. Having prepared\u00a0far breton<\/em> for many years, I no longer remember where I found this recipe, but I appreciate it for the absence of butter or any fats and for its low sugar content. Its colour varies and depends on eggs. My organic Winter egg yolks were particularly small, hence the light colour.<\/p>\n

TIP: Many people worry about the fact that prunes fall to the bottom. I don’t mind, but I have heard that coating prunes in flour prevent them from falling. (I have never tested it though).<\/p>\n

Preparation: 1 h (+ at least 2 hours in the fridge)<\/em><\/p>\n

Ingredients (fills a 10 x 30 cm or 20 x 20 cm baking dishes):<\/em><\/p>\n

250 g flour<\/em><\/p>\n

70 g sugar<\/em><\/p>\n

4 eggs<\/em><\/p>\n

750 ml milk<\/em><\/p>\n

1 pinch salt<\/em><\/p>\n

a bit of salted butter to grease the dish<\/em><\/p>\n

25 big prunes (stoned)<\/em><\/p>\n

a bowl of hot strong black tea<\/em><\/p>\n

50-100 ml rum <\/em><\/p>\n

Soak the prunes in tea until they become soft. Drain them.<\/p>\n

Preheat the oven to 180\u00b0C.<\/p>\n

Grease the pan with butter (or line with baking paper).<\/p>\n

Warm the milk until it is hot (don’t boil it!).<\/p>\n

Combine the eggs, the flour, the salt and the sugar.<\/p>\n

Slowly add the warm milk and the rum, stirring.<\/p>\n

Pour the batter (it will be very liquid) into the baking dish. (If it is not smooth, mix it in a blender or pass it through a sieve).<\/p>\n

Place the prunes inside, more or less regularly.<\/p>\n

Bake for about 1 hour until golden brown.<\/p>\n

Let the far cool down before putting it into the fridge for several hours.<\/p>\n

Serve very cold, sliced.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Far breton is one of my favourite and most frequently baked sweet dishes. It is light and low-fat, but filling, slightly sweet, but tangy, it…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9129,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7,55,10,23,6],"tags":[45],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.withaglass.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4090"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.withaglass.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.withaglass.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.withaglass.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.withaglass.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4090"}],"version-history":[{"count":40,"href":"http:\/\/www.withaglass.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4090\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15637,"href":"http:\/\/www.withaglass.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4090\/revisions\/15637"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.withaglass.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.withaglass.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.withaglass.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.withaglass.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}