Welcome to the summary page for FabulousFusionFood's Breton recipes for recipes from the Brittany, part of the Celtic world. This page provides links to all the Breton recipes presented on this site, with 93 recipes in total.

Brittany (/ˈbrɪtəni/; French: Bretagne [bʁətaɲ]; Breton: Breizh, pronounced [bʁɛjs] or [bʁɛx]; Gallo: Bertaèyn [bəʁtaɛɲ]) is a peninsula, historical country and cultural area in the north-west of modern France, covering the western part of what was known as Armorica during the period of Roman occupation. It became an independent kingdom and then a duchy before being united with the Kingdom of France in 1532 as a province governed as a separate nation under the crown.

Brittany is the site of some of the world's oldest standing architecture, home to the Cairn of Barnenez, the Tumulus Saint-Michel and others, which date to the early 5th millennium BC. Today, the historical province of Brittany is split among five French departments: Finistère in the west, Côtes-d'Armor in the north, Ille-et-Vilaine in the northeast, Morbihan in the south and Loire-Atlantique in the southeast. Loire-Atlantique now belongs to the Pays de la Loire region while the other four departments make up the Brittany region.

It is counted amongst the six Celtic nations, where a Celtic language is spoken and possesses its own distinct culture and cuisine.

The Romans called Brittany Armorica. It was a quite indefinite region that extended along the English Channel coast from the Seine estuary, then along the Atlantic coast to the Loire estuary and, according to several sources, maybe to the Garonne estuary. This term probably comes from a Gallic word, aremorica, which means 'close to the sea'. Another name, Letauia (in English 'Litavis'), was used until the 12th century. It possibly means 'wide and flat' or 'to expand' and it gave the Cymric (Welsh) name for Brittany: Llydaw.

After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, many Cornish/Dumnonian Britons settled in western Armorica to escape the Saxons and the region started to be called Britannia, although this name only replaced Armorica by the end of the fifth century and into the sixth century CE.

Prior to the Roman occupation, Brittany was inhabited by five Celtic tribes: the Curiosolitae; the Namnetes; the Osismii; the Redones and the Veneti. The region became part of the Roman Republic in 51 BCE. It was included in the province of Gallia Lugdunensis in 13 BC. Gallic towns and villages were redeveloped according to Roman standards, and several cities were created. These cities are Condate (Rennes), Vorgium (Carhaix), Darioritum (Vannes) and Condevincum or Condevicnum (Nantes). Together with Fanum Martis (Corseul), they were the capitals of the local civitates. They all had a grid plan and a forum, and sometimes a temple, a basilica, thermae or an aqueduct, like Carhaix.

With the fall of the Western Roman Empire, 3rd century AD, the region was attacked several times by Franks, Alamanni and pirates. At the same time, the local economy collapsed and many farming estates were abandoned. To face the invasions, many towns and cities were fortified, like Nantes, Rennes and Vannes.

Toward the end of the 4th century, the Britons of Domnonii (modern Devon and Cornwall) on the South-Western peninsula of Great Britain began to emigrate to Armorica, which is why the Breton language is more closely related to recorded Cornish. The history behind such an establishment is unclear, but medieval Breton, Angevin and Welsh sources connect it to a figure known as Cynan (Conan) Meriadog. Welsh literary sources assert that Cynan came to Armorica on the orders of the Roman usurper Magnus Maximus, who sent some of his British troops to Gaul to enforce his claims and settled them in Armorica. This account was supported by the Counts of Anjou, who claimed descent from a Roman soldier expelled from Lower Brittany by Cynan on Magnus's orders.

Scholars such as Léon Fleuriot have suggested a two-wave model of migration from Britain which saw the emergence of an independent Breton people and established the dominance of the Brythonic Breton language in Armorica.

At the beginning of the medieval era, Brittany was divided among three kingdoms, Domnonea, Cornouaille and Broërec. These realms eventually merged into a single state during the 9th century. Brittany was heavily attacked by the Vikings at the beginning of the 10th century. The kingdom lost its eastern territories, including Normandy and Anjou, and the county of Nantes was given to Fulk I of Anjou in 909. However, Nantes was seized by the Vikings in 914. At this time Brittany was also called Lydwiccum.

Nantes was eventually liberated by Alan II of Brittany in 937 with the support of his godbrother King Æthelstan of England. Alan II totally expelled the Vikings from Brittany and recreated a strong Breton state. For aiding in removing the problem, Alan paid homage to Louis IV of France (who was Æthelstan's nephew and had returned from England in the same year as Alan II) and thus Brittany ceased to be a kingdom and became a duchy.

Medieval Brittany was far from being a united nation. The French king maintained envoys in Brittany, alliances contracted by local lords often overlapped and there was no specific Breton unity. For example, Brittany replaced Latin with French as its official language in the 13th century, 300 years before France did so, and the Breton language didn't have formal status.

The Breton War of Succession, a local episode of the Hundred Years' War, saw the House of Blois, backed by the French, fighting with the House of Montfort, backed by the English. The Montforts won in 1364 and enjoyed a period of total independence until the end of the Hundred Years' War, because France was weakened and stopped sending royal envoys to the Court of Brittany.

Brittany importantly lost the Mad War against France in 1488, mostly because of its internal divisions that were exacerbated by the corruption at the court of Francis II, Duke of Brittany. Indeed, some rebel Breton lords were fighting on the French side.

As a result of the Mad War, the Duke Francis II could not have his daughter Anne married without the king of France's consent. Nonetheless, she married the Holy Roman Emperor in 1490, leading to a crisis with France. Charles VIII of France besieged Rennes and had the marriage cancelled. He eventually married Anne of Brittany. After he died childless, the duchess had to marry his heir and cousin Louis XII. Anne unsuccessfully tried to preserve Breton independence, but she died in 1514, and the union between the two crowns was formally carried out by Francis I in 1532. Under the Ancien Régime, Brittany and France were governed as separate countries but under the same crown, so Breton aristocrats in the French royal court were classed as Princes étrangers (foreign princes).

The Duchy was legally abolished with the French Revolution that began in 1789 - and in 1790 the province of Brittany was divided into five departments: Côtes-du-Nord (later Côtes-d'Armor), Finistère, Ille-et-Vilaine, Loire-Inférieure (later Loire-Atlantique) and Morbihan. Brittany essentially lost all its special privileges that existed under the Duchy.

French, the sole official language of the French Republic, is spoken today by the vast majority in Brittany, for whom it is usually their mother tongue. However, French was not widely known in the region before the 19th century, and two regional languages exist in Brittany: Breton and Gallo. They are separated by a language border that has constantly moved back since the Middle Ages.

Breton remained the language of the rural population, but since the Middle Ages the bourgeoisie, the nobility, and the higher clergy have spoken French.

Government policies in the 19th and 20th centuries made education compulsory and, at the same time, forbade the use of Breton in schools to push non-French speakers into adopting the French language. Nevertheless, until the 1960s Breton was spoken or understood by many of the inhabitants of western Brittany. During the 1970s, Breton schools were opened and the local authorities started to promote the language, which was on the brink of extinction because parents had stopped teaching it to their children.

Having declined from more than one million speakers around 1950 to about 200,000 in the first decade of the 21st century, of whom 61% are more than 60 years old, Breton is classified as 'severely endangered' by the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger. However, the number of children attending bilingual classes has risen 33% between 2006 and 2012 to 14,709.

The Cuisine of Brittany

Although Muscadet and Gros Plant white wines are produced south of the Loire, the traditional drink of Brittany is cider. Brittany is the second-largest cider-producing region in France. Breton cider is traditionally served in a bowl or a cup. Brittany also has a long beer-brewing tradition, tracing its roots back to the 17th century. Young artisanal brewers are keeping a variety of beer types alive, such as Coreff de Morlaix, Tri Martolod and Britt. Stronger alcohols include the chouchen, a sort of mead made with wild honey, and an apple eau de vie called lambig.

Crêpes and galettes are the two most well-known Breton dishes. The crêpes, made and served with butter, are eaten for dessert and the galettes are usually salty and made with buckwheat. They traditionally replaced bread as basic food and they can be served with cheese, sausages, bacon, mushrooms or eggs. They can be accompanied by Breton buttermilk called lait ribot. Brittany also has a dish similar to the pot-au-feu known as the kig ha farz (meat with stuffing), which consists of stewed pork or beef with buckwheat dumplings.

Surrounded by the sea, Brittany offers a wide range of fresh seafood and fish, especially mussels and oysters. Among the seafood specialities is a fish stew called cotriade. The beurre blanc sauce, invented in Saint-Julien-de-Concelles, close to Nantes, is often served with fish. Brittany is also known for its salt, mainly harvested around Guérande and used in butter and milk caramels. The region is notable for its biscuit factories, many towns having their own: Quimper, Lorient, Pont-Aven, Saint-Brieuc, BN and LU in Nantes, La Trinitaine in La Trinité-sur-Mer, and Galettes Saint-Michel in Saint-Michel-Chef-Chef. They usually make their biscuits with salted butter and sell them in iron boxes. Famous Breton pastries include the kouign amann ('butter cake' in Breton) made with bread dough and high quantities of butter and sugar, and the far, a type of batter pudding usually made with plums.