Sausage pancake : La galette-saucisse est un in case composed of a sausage de porc grilled, rolled in a buckwheat pancake Cold. It is mainly consumed in Upper Brittany, more precisely in Ille-et-Vilaine and in certain parts of its bordering departments: Côtes-d'Armor, Morbihan, Loire-Atlantique, Mayenne and Manche.
Created and popularized during the XNUMXth century, it brings together two products of Breton gastronomy. THE buckwheat (or “black wheat”) was introduced into the agrarian systems of the Great West around the second half of the XNUMXth century. Cooked in the form of pancakes, porridge or sometimes bread, the buckwheat was widely cultivated in the Breton and lower Normandy countryside until the XNUMXth century. A substitute for bread for the poor, its very strong taste is softened by various accompaniments. Among the latter, the charcuteries, including pork sausage, are among the specialties of the Rennes region.
The sausage pancake therefore became a popular snack, eaten standing up and by hand, during festivals, markets or sporting events. It is thus strongly associated with the Stade Rennais football club, and becomes one of the emblems of popular gastronomy in Upper Brittany.
Composition of the sausage pancake: The sausage pancake is composite by buckwheat pancake, obtained by the baking by dough made of Buckwheat flour (parfois appelé aussi « blé noir »), typical of the culinary tradition of Upper Brittany; of a sausage de porc, composée, pour les spécialistes, de 75 à 80 % de viande de porc pour 20 à 25 % de gorge de porc (fat), seasoned with Pepper as well as salt of Guerande.
The use of different sausages, in particular Strasbourg sausage, is not well received.
The pancake is traditionally cold (it can be lukewarm), to eat the sausage hot without burning your fingers, but is also lukewarm, when the pancakes are made as they are consumed, which would be preferred by consumers .
Several sausage cooking practices have been identified:
– on the barbecue, where cooking is dedicated to direct consumption (15 to 30 minutes depending on the embers) or delayed (sausages removed from the heat before complete cooking and kept warm, then returned to cooking before being served) ;
– in a bain-marie, reheated on the grill, as practiced by certain sausage-cake stands around Roazhon Park;
– in the pan, as indicated in several recipe books. This cooking is however preferred for consumption at the table.
The dressing consists of a pancake folded in half, on which a hot sausage is placed. The sausage then serves as an axis for rolling the pancake. It is also possible to put two pancakes, what we call “a double”.
En aperitif, you can find “chipottouses”, composed of small sausages rolled in small pancakes. They are cut into small bites, each secured with a wooden stick.
Accompaniments and seasoning: The galette-sausage can receive a sauce during dressing, although the association for the protection of the Breton galette-sausage recommends not adding any accompaniment. In the past, the sausage pancake was accompanied by pepper, and tolerance exists today for the use of mustard. Adding a sauce is a sensitive subject, as Benjamin Keltz points out: “Ketchup, mayonnaise and other sauces, however, remain frowned upon. Very, very, even frowned upon.”
The same recommendation applies to garnish, although many other possibilities exist. Historically, the pancake is offered to take away with many accompaniments (including sausage). From the beginning of the XNUMXth century, the sausage pancake was accompanied by yellow onions, which we find in the tradition of the Manche department, where the sausage pancake is eaten with an onion compote. The galette-sausage-cheese is the second best seller of the galettiers and the galette-sausage-slice of bacon also exists, as do menus including fries and sodas. All kinds of variations, with more pancakes or more sausages are also appearing.
There were other accompaniments, placed hot in a cold pancake: pork meat, grilled sardine, cold pâté.
As an accompanying drink, beverage traditional is the cider, historically much more consumed in Brittany than wine or beer. Contrary to what the song Galette-saucisse je t'aime suggests, buttermilk - which can be consumed when the buckwheat pancake is used as a substitute for bread - is not a traditional accompaniment to the galette-sausage.
History of the sausage pancake: Although the sausage was already well known in Brittany in the XNUMXth century, it was not immediately associated with the buckwheat pancake. However, since the latter has a strong taste, it is quickly enhanced with various accompaniments, notably numerous cold meats, these being traditionally part of the local specialties:
– the “porchet”, eaten in the north of Ille-et-Vilaine in the XNUMXth century, is a terrine which is eaten in a buckwheat pancake;
– “cassia”, consumed in the Rennes region at the end of the XNUMXth century, is composed of pork offal and calf’s trotters cooked in the oven. The dish is very sought after, and is eaten before Lent at the slaughter of the pig, rolled in a buckwheat pancake; pork pâté, which is also eaten rolled in a pancake, at the end of the Lices market. Certified in the XNUMXth century, this practice is due to the quality of local charcuterie.
Introduced in the pancake during the XNUMXth century, it was at the end of this century that sausage became fashionable, with consumers abandoning other charcuterie specialties. At the beginning of the XNUMXth century, a galette maker named Nelleau, nicknamed Poganne, and running a shop in Rennes, at the corner of Rue des Dames de la Visitation and Rue de la Motte-Fablet, offered improved pancakes, including a cold one including a grilled sausage. . As time goes by, grilled sausage takes up more and more space at festivals, always rolled up in a pancake; event organizers communicate about the presence of this specialty to attract people. The presence of the sausage pancake is then attested in Ille-et-Vilaine, but also in Côtes-d'Armor, in Manche or in Mayenne.
The popularity of the galette-sausage in Rennes is linked to the residents' Sunday outings. At the beginning of the XNUMXth century, they went to eat a sausage pancake in the suburbs or towns close to the city, including Robiquette in Saint-Grégoire, a place which gives a nickname to the sausage pancake. Its consumption then becomes more and more popular: we find the sausage pancake at all festivals, in the markets, as well as around football matches played at Roazhon Park or shuffleboard games.
“The pancakes wait patiently to be wrapped around long pieces of sausages grilled over a wood fire, right at the party site. There is no meeting in Upper Brittany where you do not breathe the rich and fatty aroma of grilling sausage. »
Marketing and consumption of the sausage pancake: The sausage pancake is a snack eaten by hand. This particularity differentiates it from pancakes including other fillings (wholemeal pancake, forest pancake, etc.), which are table meals eaten at home or in a creperie, with cutlery. The consumption of sausage pancakes is therefore done during a barbecue, during any party or at a market, without having to sit down at the table. The making of sausage pancakes can thus be carried out by itinerant sellers on stands, or in food trucks: in Rennes, generally six at the Lices market and eighteen around the Roazhon Park stadium, which produce several hundred pancakes per event. Its consumption in a standing position is recognized as a factor of conviviality and integration.
The sale of sausage pancakes is typical of Upper Brittany, but the definitions of its consumption area fluctuate: according to sources, this consists of a circle with a radius of 150 kilometers around Rennes, including the departments bordering Ille-et-Vilaine, or is located to the east of a line linking the region of Saint-Brieuc to that of Ancenis, via Redon. Some attempts to introduce the galette-sausage in Lower Brittany have been made, in particular by the company Hénaff, which joined forces in 2007 with the association for the protection of the Breton galette-sausage.
Sales stands are thus set up during several summer festivals, such as the Vieilles Charrues in Carhaix-Plouguer or the Cornouaille Festival in Quimper, in Finistère.
Following Hénaff's initiative, other manufacturers began marketing the sausage pancake. In 2014, Galettes Bertel, based in Pleudihen-sur-Rance, developed a range of filled pancakes, including the sausage pancake, available as a snack, particularly in supermarkets, large and medium-sized supermarkets. A year later, the he Swedish company Ikea decides to offer the sausage pancake on the menu of the restaurant of its Pacé store, in a strategy of integrating local specialties.
If one of the ten commandments decreed by the association for the protection of Breton pancakes and sausages recommends a maximum selling price of 2 euros, this is most often between 2,20 and 2,50 euros. At the Moustoir stadium in Lorient, in a region where the sausage pancake is not part of traditional gastronomy, it has been sold since 2004 at the price of 4 euros. The cost of its manufacture is conditioned by that of the raw materials: thus, a 40% increase in the price of buckwheat flour is cited by certain traders to explain the increase in their prices. Simple to make, the sausage pancake has established itself as a profitable product for traders, while remaining affordable for consumers.
Socio-cultural aspects: The sausage pancake is part of the gastronomic heritage of Upper Brittany, a territory whose gastronomy is not very developed. Described as a “strong identity marker” and a symbol for the inhabitants of Ille-et-Vilaine, the sausage pancake is used as a symbol of the territory in the press (notably for the Transmusicales de Rennes) or for Internet users. The sausage pancake is also strongly associated with the Stade Rennais football club.
The consumption of sausage pancakes is commonly associated with football matches played by Stade Rennais, since its creation in 1901. With the gradual increase in attendance at the route de Lorient stadium during the XNUMXth century, the number of pancake sellers -sausages increased sharply during matches, especially after the Second World War. The snack is gradually becoming an essential for Rennes supporters going to the stadium, and even inside. Sixteen sales stands are dotted around the stadium on match days, and some football players associate the matches they played in Rennes with the smell of grilled sausages, depending on the direction of the wind.
In fact, the sausage pancake became directly associated with Stade Rennes, including at the national level: on October 27, 2013, the day after a Rennes victory against Toulouse Football Club, the sports daily L'Équipe headlined “Galette: 5, Sausage: 0”, in reference to the score of the match, the sausage pancake and the Toulouse sausage. A few weeks earlier, Lucas Deaux, player of the Nantes Football Club, congratulated himself on having “beat the sausage pancakes”, at the end of a derby won by the Loire-Atlantique club, thus nicknamed his opponents of Stade Rennes.
At the beginning of the 1990s, two Rennes supporters, members of the Roazhon Celtic Kop, created a song called Galette-saucisse je t'aime during a trip to Marseille. Adapted from a Marseille supporters' song dedicated to pastis, it has since been adopted by the club, as well as by a majority of the Rennes public, seduced by its second degree and its unifying aspect, as opposed to the aggressiveness of certain other songs of supporters. This song has become a brand of identity and has passed into popular culture.
In the song: Inspired by a bawdy song from the Midi (51 Je t'aime), the tune Galette sausage, je t'aime was a song by Rennes supporters before being covered by Jacky and The Freepix Revolution, via a clip unveiled on January 29, 2012. The singer of the group, Jacky Sourget, held the position of speaker at the Route de Lorient stadium until 2011.
“Sausage patty, I love you!”
I will eat kilos (and kilos!) of it!
Throughout Ille-et-Vilaine
With buttermilk! »
La Galette-saucisse is also a song by the Breton group Les Glochos, from Pontivy, recorded in 2003:
“Having a sausage pancake
For Bretons or tourists
Having a sausage pancake
It feels good wherever it slides! »
In 2008, in his song Rockabilig, subtitled “Krampouez rock”, the British-Belgian singer Gérard Jaffrès rhymed “galette-sausage” with Elvis.
In literature: Two novels, set in Brittany, mention the sausage pancake:
“I like the smell of cabbage in the houses, the pork we eat on oilcloths, the “sausage pancakes” wrapped in baking paper.
— Dorothée Letessier, Le Voyage à Paimpol, 1980, Le Seuil, p. 26.
“So, he tried the andouille soubise galette, followed by a sausage galette and finished with a crepe flambé with calva. »
— Richard Deutsch, Les Voix de Brest, 2006, editions of August 28, p. 52.
Association for the protection of Breton pancakes and sausages:
The ten commandments of the SGSB:
Sausage, less than 120 grams, you will not do;
No mustard, you will not use;
III. Fat, you will never be;
At Stade Rennes, you will excel;
With two hands and at any time, we will eat you;
A glass of cider will accompany you;
VII. Maximum two euros you will cost;
VIII. Service, smile, you will get them;
We'll grill you perfectly;
In Rennes, this charter will be respected.
Created in 1994, the association for the protection of Breton pancakes (SGSB) aims to promote the sausage pancake, thus campaigning for the use by traders of quality products, against rising prices, and for the diffusion of the sausage pancake outside of Upper Brittany. Eighteen years after its creation, it boasts 3 members, some scattered all over the world. From its creation, the association drew up a charter, laying down the ten commandments to respect in order to consume a sausage pancake in optimal conditions.
Founded by two supporters of Stade Rennes, the association aims to be zany but does not hesitate to put pressure on traders to improve the quality of their products and respect the traditional preparation of the pancake-sausage. Multiplying media appearances, she also presented two political candidacies, the first in the legislative elections of 1997 for the constituency of Fougères, the second in the municipal elections of 2001 for the town hall of Rennes. During the first vote, his candidacy received 2% of the votes