Thick, crumbly biscuits made rich and slightly salty with plenty of salted butter and egg yolks.
What makes it palets bretons
Salted butter — lots of it — and egg yolks.
Thick and crumbly, baked in a ring.
A little salt you can taste against the sugar.
Where it comes from
Breton butter biscuits became famous when factories started making them in tins in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries — Pont-Aven and the coast of southern Brittany are the names most tied to them.
The palet is the thick one, baked in rings so it keeps its sides; the thinner galette bretonne is its crisper relation. Both are also the base for tarts: the sablé breton.
How it varies
Galettes bretonnes
Thinner and crisper, from the same dough.
Sablé breton
The dough as a tart base, topped with fruit or cream.