In pastry making and working with chocolate there are two basic elaborations that are used as an ingredient and also as a product in itself to compose desserts, chocolates, cakes, ice creams and all kinds of sweets: the praline and the gianduja. They are often confused with each other also because of the wide use given to the terms in preparations that are not exactly canonical, but differentiating between the two is easy if we know the basic theory.
The most difficult thing is to establish a precise definition of the term praline or pralin, since its origin is not entirely clear and nowadays it is applied to different elaborations in different languages. For example, in German you give praline is simply a chocolate or truffle, while das / der Bonbon refers only to candies or gummies.
In Spain, perhaps we are more used to these words in their application in desserts and sweets of higher pastry, or industrial products of more supposedly gourmet cut such as filled chocolate bars and bonbons. Besides, the infinite range of various nougat with bizarre flavors that overwhelm us every Christmas they are classified as “pralines”; they can be made of all the flavors and ingredients a restless mind can imagine.
What is praline
According to the RAE, the praline comes from the same French word and defines it as a simple “chocolate and almond or hazelnut cream“, referring only to the most common and popular application in our country, the aforementioned ‘fake’ nougat and various sweets.
However, in professional pastry, praline is something very different and it does not have chocolate in its original form, and is conceived rather as a technique or basic preparation prior to preparing more complex preparations.
A praline is a caramelised mixture made from crush nuts with sugar caramel. Depending on the level of crushing, different degrees of praline are obtained with textures that go from a kind of granulated earth to a homogeneous cream. The praline cream It is the most common formula and the one that is commonly used as an ingredient to combine with, for example, melted chocolate or ganache. It is a common filling for chocolates, desserts and nougat.
Its invention is usually attributed to Marshal Lassagne, an officer in the army of the Duc de Choiseul-Praslin (1589-1675), from whom the name would come. Originally it would only be about whole caramelised almonds and covered with a sugar candy that could be flavored in various ways, something like what we know today as caramelised.
Still today, especially in France, the term is used praline -without accent- for distinguish between praline cream and caramelised whole nuts, the technique of which spread across Europe and the United States from Louisiana through the French settlers.
How to make the praline
The formula is very simple: the same amount of raw peeled nuts (almonds, hazelnuts … or mixture) than of sugar and first prepare a caramel by heating it in a pan or casserole. Once ready, add the nuts or pour the liquid caramel over them, spread on parchment paper, letting it dry and solidify.
It is then split into large pieces and chopped or commenced in a mincer or food processor with sharp blades and powerful motor. This first coarse-grained mixture is called pralin, and it should be somewhat dry and earthy.
When it keeps grinding oils are released from the fat of the dried fruit and an increasingly refined cream is obtained: the praline itself. Among its most common uses in pastry is mixing it with melted chocolate, being then a pralinoise.
Some authors prefer to make the caramel also using water to first prepare a syrup, but the most canonical basic recipe only requires nuts and sugar, always in equal parts by weight. Our homemade praline recipe is even easier to use in desserts.
Gianduja, the Italian specialty that gave rise to Nutella
If the praline takes us to the French pastry, with the gianduja or gianduia we travel now until Italy. The popularity of Nutella – and its various controversies in recent years – have made us quite familiar with this chocolate base, although it is often gets confused with the praline or the pralinoise.
Indeed, Nutella is a cocoa cream derived from the gianduja, but they are not synonymous or equivalent to the same thing. The name comes from the traditional commedia dell’arte Italian, referring to one of the archetypal masks representing Turin and Piedmont. The inventor of the gianduja cream named his creation in his honor.
Although, in principle, gianduja can be made with any dried fruit, its original formula is prepared with Piedmont hazelnuts, whose tradition and quality is recognized with the product guarantee with PGI by the European Union, and is the most valued for different elaborations such as ice cream and other sweets; the most appreciated is the variety tonda gentile trilobata.
The gianduja is obtained by continuously crushing and grinding the hazelnuts until obtaining a very fine fatty cream from the release of their oils, which are then mixes with chocolate molten. Although there are formulas that save steps mixing chocolate with praline, and more in domestic recipes, an authentic gianduja is not made from praline.
It was the Turinense chocolatier Michele prochet who devised the gianduja when the continental blockade imposed by Napoleon in 19th century Europe reduced the arrival of cocoa to Italy. As early as 1852, the chocolate producer Caffarel created, from this chocolate and hazelnut cream, one of the most famous sweets in northern Italy, the gianduiotto, with his iconic ingot shape, and that continue to be produced today.
In the middle of the 20th century, Pietro Ferrero sold his first block of the one baptized as Gianduja pasta, conceived as a semi-solid paste to be spread and as a remedy for the lack of supplies in postwar Europe. Shortly after, he would refine his work with the Gianduja super creambut it would be his son Michele ferrero placeholder image who would perfect the recipe in 1964 and begin to sell it throughout the continent, renaming it as Nutella and creating a worldwide success.
Our recipe for hazelnut and cocoa cream is a slightly healthier and simpler homemade proposal, and soon we will share how to do gianduja -or gianduiotto– easily at home.
Photos | Unsplash – Département des Yvelines – Stone Soup – Kurman Communications – Kadluba – Marcho Verch – Wikimmedia Commons – Ferrero
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