Cédric Grolet Reveals his Famous Pain au Chocolat Recipe

Here is Cedric Grolet’s famous pain au chocolat recipe! This recipe is from the star pâtissier’s pastry book called Opera Patisserie. For more French recipes, see my article on the best French pastry books of all time.

---

I independently select all products featured on Leonce Chenal. If you buy something through my links, I may earn an affiliate commission, at no cost to you. I only recommend products I genuinely love.

Pain au chocolat, literally “chocolate bread,” is one of the best-known French pastries. It’s a type of viennoiserie sweet pastry consisting of a cuboid-shaped piece of yeast-leavened laminated dough with two pieces of dark chocolate in the center. The pain au chocolat is made of the same layered dough as a croissant.

Both croissants and pains au chocolat are relatively modern inventions. Indeed, these types of pastries, called “viennoiseries” in French, were introduced in the early 19th century, when August Zang, an Austrian officer, and Ernest Schwarzer, an Austrian aristocrat, founded a Viennese bakery in Paris located at 92, rue de Richelieu. Originally, croissants and pains au chocolat were made from a brioche base but later evolved to incorporate a buttery, flaky dough (pâte feuilletée).

Pain au Chocolat or Chocolatine?

In France, the name of the pain au chocolat varies by region. And there is an old yet actual argument over what this pastry should be called. This is the famous pain au chocolat-chocolatine linguistic debate of France. Indeed, the word pain au chocolat is used in central France, southern and Paris, whereas in southwestern France (Nouvelle-Aquitaine and Occitanie), the word chocolatine is preferred.

In 2018, there was even a linguistic debate about the official name of chocolate pastries in the French parliament, with MPs debating over whether the word chocolatine should be an official alternative to the better-known pain au chocolat. The effort was unsuccessful, with deputies in the national assembly voting it down.

The origin of the word chocolatine is unclear. Some say that it comes from 15th-century English Aquitaine rulers who would ask for “chocolate in bread” in bakeries, which the French understood as “chocolate in.” Others say the name originated with August Zang —the Austrian baker who sold Viennese croissants at his Parisian bakery in the 1830s— who was baking crescent-shaped, chocolate-filled croissants called schokoladencroissants, which translates into French as chocolatine.

Pain au Chocolat or Chocolate Croissant?

Being French, I’ve never heard the term “chocolate croissant” referring to a pain au chocolat. In France, in addition to the traditional croissant au beurre you’ll find in most bakeries the croissant aux amandes (or “almond croissant”) or the croissant aux abricots also known as Oranais but no “chocolate croissants”. If you’re asking in a French boulangerie a “chocolate croissant,” chances are the baker will correct you and says, “pain au chocolate.”

For us, even if these pastries are both made of the same layered dough (“pâte feuilletée”), croissants and pains au chocolat are radically different. Indeed, if a pain au chocolat is cut into rectangular shapes and filled with two chocolate bars, conversely, croissants are cut into triangles before rolling to create a crescent moon shape.

So without further ado, here is Cédric Grolet’s pain au chocolat recipe! Also, if you need more guidance on how to shape the pains au chocolate, you can see how the baker is doing it in this Vogue France video.

Et voilà! I hope you enjoyed this pain au chocolat recipe. If you make this recipe, be sure to leave a comment and/or give this recipe a rating, letting me know how you liked it. Merci beaucoup and bon appétit!