Who does Amsterdam's best pain au chocolat?
10 bakeries, 10 pain au chocolat, one impending gout diagnosis.
Champagne for my real friends, real pain for my sham friends. Or as I like to say: pain au chocolat for me, pain au chocolat for you.
Ah, a pain au chocolat. The feel of it in your hand: square, steady, reliable, like a brick. Sure, it isn’t as demure as a croissant and it lacks the glistening, stained glass centre of a Danish. What a pain au chocolat has going for it is its blatantness: it has to be made right but it also has to be made with the right ingredients. Those two chocolate bars at its centre can’t be bad. It allows little room for error (at least with a bad croissant you can treat it like a piece of fluff) and because of that, I deeply respect it.
So, in the grand tradition of investigative journalism, I decide to put Amsterdam’s bakeries to a taste test – a thin-margined task considering how good we have it here. I never shy away from a challenge, especially one that has me shooting along cycle lanes in the pursuit of pastry. I pick up pain au chocolate from some of the best bakeries in Noord, Oost, Zuid and West, clear my kitchen table, line up my specimens and slowly descend into gluten-induced hysteria.
On a physical, emotional and spiritual level, this challenge leaves me feeling like this emoji: 😵💫
So what makes a good pain au chocolat? A good, dark bake is a must. Give me caramelisation. The lamination should be fully on display but it shouldn’t be unruly like an exploded jack-in-the-box. Imagine a flip book in use. Inside, there should be an even honeycomb structure – no obvious layers. This tripartite texture – crispy on the outside, softness in the middle, a slight bite of chocolate (I actually like my chocolate bar to be on the firmer side but I find this only achievable in colder weather) is what makes a pain au chocolat. In terms of flavour, there should be a strong buttery warmth, and the delicate, yeasty flavour of the dough shouldn’t be obliterated by the hum of dark chocolate.
Before we get going, let me say: none of these pastries are actively bad. We’re spoilt for choice in Amsterdam and your best pain au chocolat might just be your closest one, for that very reason. I was also despy to include the excellent Baux and Farine but timings didn’t allow it.
Right then, let’s whip out the microscope…
et CLAIRE
et CLAIRE’s pain au chocolat immediately stands out with its circular, proud shape and dark backbone. Considering it cost me a whopping €4.75, I’m hoping for a gold bar inside, not a chocolate one. It’s so tall I don’t quite know how to bite into it – after 30 seconds of deliberation I decide to risk dislocation and chomp at its side. The chocolate is fantastic, it’s thicker than the others and as rich as a banker’s wallet. The internal spiderweb is also impressive. That said, I find the whole thing underwhelming. For the price, it should blow me away. It isn’t buttery, or cheeky, and it’s – dare I say it – a touch dry, which might explain its huge structure (drier doughs are easy to manipulate). Still, I’m not letting that chocolate go to waste. I don’t care that I have nine more pastries to eat.
Pain au score: 6/10
Bakhuys
Onto more reasonably priced pastries, which now all come in at around €3. Bakhuys’ might be the most quintessential looking pain au chocolat: neatly shaped, perfectly coloured, with a great gloss on top. A hair model from a Pantene advert with a voluminous and shiny mane, let’s say. I enjoy the texture, it’s a touch softer than the competition but it still has integrity, a midway point between southern European viennoiserie (softer, wetter) and northern European (more architectural, crispier). The chocolate is properly gooey, so if that’s your thing, this is the one for you. This a good pain au chocolat! It could do with a touch more pizazz but if I lived near Bakhuys, I’d be a happy man.
Pain au score: 7.5/10
MAS Atelier
How many ways can you describe the look of a pain au chocolat? I’m on number three and already struggling. This one from MAS looks… even, well-baked and um… quite pain au chocolaty? But the taste – it is butter. Butter wrapped in foil, taken from the fridge and curled into a cinematic swirl with a knife. It’s an evocative pain au chocolat, somehow the most homely yet clearly the product of pure professionalism. I’m charmed by the dough but I’m not as into the chocolate, unfortunately. It’s too nondescript. This was so close, but no cigar – the quality of chocolate is too important to me. I have now eaten the equivalent of two pastries. Why am I not using a spittoon??
Pain au score: 8/10
Bakkerij Mater
Mater’s is the dinkiest of the day, being about half the size of the others. It’s also quite wrinkly, like it’s recently come out of the bath. I’m wholesale confused by this pastry: the texture is quite dusty, turning into claggy as it sifts around my mouth. There aren’t any layers inside. The flavour is not bad… quite funky… definitely unusual? The whole pastry is unusual in fact, there must be some deliberateness here but I honestly can’t grasp its point of view. No shade to Mater, people love ‘em, and well done for sticking it up to the norm, but personally, this isn’t the pain au chocolat I’d want as a special Sunday morning treat. On a side note, my keyboard is now greasier than a chip pan.
Pain au score: 3/10
Le Fournil de Sébastien
Mais oui, we’re immediately in French territory: the pastry is soft in my hand, and wider and flatter than the others. It’s that beloved pillow you refuse to throw away despite its lumpiness and concerning brown colour. When I bite into it, it tears, rather than shatters. This is a rustic pastry designed to be eaten out of a small paper bag while you hurtle along a French motorway in a rental car – not like our other more chichi options, which would undoubtedly be served on a small plate designed to accentuate the ceremonial moment of their consumption. I do like its charm, and at €2.10 Le Fournil is the best value of the day, but the flavour isn’t as good as I’d hoped.
Pain au score: 6/10
Grammes
I’m immediately impressed with the pastry’s bite: it accepts my teeth, guides them through crispy layers towards a softer inside and that snappy, chocolate heart. I like that it’s not too bulbous: my jaw can actually manage the perimeter unlike some of the others (I’m still sore from et CLAIRE). Inside, the layers are fantastically structured and better yet, they’re whimsically decorated with a chocolate band! How impressive! But I don’t get as much butter flavour as I want. And I can’t shake the feeling there’s something a touch soulless about it, as if in the pursuit of perfection, Grammes have created an overly calculated pain au chocolat. A pastry that’s mastered the rules but needs to learn when to break them. I’m feeling sick and I have to pause to extract a pastry flake from my eye. I finally understand why they call it a PAIN au chocolat.
Pain au score: 8/10
Ulmus
Ulmus’ offering is the breadiest of the day – it reminds me more of a soft, fluffy bun than a laminated pastry. It lacks a crispy top and when I bite in, the mouthfeel is cotton. There are echoes of layers but only just. If I had a child, they’d probably devour this – its sponginess feels perfect for little fingers. But I don’t have a child, I have a dog. One that’s currently sat on his bed with warbling eyes, pleading for a bit of pastry. Sorry pooch, no pastry for you.
Pain au score: 4.5/10