3 minute read
Kugelhopf's Louisiana Beginnings
C'est Francais, ce Kugelhopf
Maurice French Pastries boasts Louisiana's famous kugelhopf
Story and photo by Lorin Gaudin
"Oh no Lorin, my kugelhopf is from Lorraine." These were the commanding words of Maurice French Pastries Chef-Owner, Jean-Luc Albin, as we began our conversation about the kugelhopf's name, shape, and origin.
Kugelhopf is a hat-shaped cake with storied and varied legends, including one claim that it was gifted to a man who provided shelter to the three wise men on their long journey from Bethlehem. More bread than cake (there's even a savory version) in my understanding, kugelhopf remains a staple throughout Europe, though most popular in France, Germany, Austria, and the Alsace-Lorraine.
Tilting his head in a very French manner, Chef Albin gave a crooked smile, and said, "Pfft . . . Alsatian kugelhopf is dryer. That is not the way we make it in Lorraine.
Made of ceramic, the tall, round, and fluted kugelhopf pan has a hole in the center, allowing for large cakes to be baked thoroughly because heat comes in direct contact with the middle of the cake. How it arrived in America is fascinating lore in itself. Purportedly, an heirloom kugelhopf pan made it to Minneapolis (home of bakeware manufacturer, Nordic Ware) and was used by a member of a Jewish women's group who often baked a sharing cake called a bundkuchen. Near the end of the 1940s, the women's group is said to have approached the Nordic Ware founder and requested he re-create the pretty fluted pan using contemporary materials, and thus was born the bundt pan.
But kugelhopf has a Louisiana life, a history all its own. And while Chef Albin’s kugelhopf is a tweak of Chef Maurice Ravet’s original, his version has certainly carried the tradition most famously. Chef Albin’s connection to the local kugelhopf begins in 1988 when he returned to New Orleans to work with Chef Ravet. Having begun his cooking career at the age of fourteen, Chef Albin spent many years cooking in France and the U.S. by way of Bermuda, working as a chef in Atlanta, New Orleans, Dallas, and Los Angeles. An opportunity to work as the food and beverage director of the Windsor Court lured him back to the Crescent City, but it was Maurice’s French Pastries that inspired him to stay. Chef Ravet had owned Maurice’s French Pastries since the late 1970s, and after only a short time working together, Chef Albin bought the bakery from Chef Maurice in March 1989. He continued making kugelhopf with one difference: he used his mother’s recipe—a recipe from Lorraine, France, which included sour cream and other fresh ingredients to keep it tender and light.
That very same summer, upon my return to New Orleans from culinary training in Paris, I went looking for several foods I’d often either made or eaten in France; one of those foods was kugelhopf— the dry-ish, not-too-sweet, currant-studded bread-cake. My sainted mother-in-law, Janice, directed me to Maurice French Pastries, where she believed it had been invented, though she swore the cake was soft and sweet, “kind of like a pound cake, with a slightly crunchy outside.” That didn’t describe the kugelhopf of my experience, but it was worth checking out.
Just through the front doors of the Metairie bakery was a four-tiered open-shelving case stacked high with kugelhopf. I chose a currant kugelhopf, took it home, and cut into it. Chef Albin’s cake was indeed softer and sweeter—delicious—but nothing like anything I’d previously eaten or made. New Orleans tends to forge its own way in food and here is the hard fact: Maurice French Pastries’ kugelhopf is very popular. Twenty-two years later, that wooden shelf is still there, continually stocked with freshly baked cakes, available year-round, in an enormous range of flavors (around thirty!) both traditional (almond) and imaginative (chocolate and edible gold in honor of the Saints; whisky-laced Old Fashioned Cocktail, or a licorice-y “Anis” for St. Joseph’s Day in March, for instance), and slick Goldbelly shipping to get baked goods nationwide and abroad.
Vive la différence. For me, kugelhopf is meant to be drier, brioche-like and faintly sweet—the German style, if you will. However, put down a Maurice French Pastries kugelhopf, and I’m a convert, origin stories be damned. Smiling wide, Chef Albin assures me, “This is the original kugelhopf. It is French.”
Maurice French Pastries
3501 Hessmer Metairie, Louisiana 70002
mauricefrenchpastries.com
Lorin Gaudin
