Paris-Brest

The Paris-Brest is a ring-shaped choux pastry filled with praline mousseline cream and scattered with flaked almonds. It was created in 1910 by Louis Durand, a pastry chef in Maisons-Laffitte, at the request of Pierre Giffard to celebrate the Paris-Brest-Paris cycling race. Its circular form evokes a bicycle wheel, and its richness once supplied riders with the calories demanded by the endurance event.