Gluten Free Pain au Chocolat

Enjoy the taste of Paris with this easy recipe for Pain au Chocolat.

Growing up we moved a lot for my dad’s job, like 9 times before I went to college. We were lucky enough to live in Europe for 3 years when I was in Middle School. We lived in Germany and had all of Europe to explore!

My mom and I would travel over long weekends to anywhere we could reach by train, bus or car. We ended up in Paris during a few of those trips.

The Partisan culture is something all of its own. Cafés line the streets with chairs facing outward so you can observe all the action on the streets. We would find a café, grab a table outside and settle in for a long meal. The people watching was beautiful, the cars, the language, it was all so lovely.

During many of the meals I would order a chocolate croissant or Pain au Chocolat. Often I would have more then 1 a day! They were served with breakfast at the hotels and at a café for dessert with our afternoon tea. It was heaven.

Later in college I did a semester abroad and again had the pleasure of eating true Partisan pastries. Italy even did an amazing job with the Pain au Chocolat.

I also made a video to show you how I created these tasty treats, but give me some grace as I’m not a pro at video.

Now that I live Gluten Free, finding good pastries is near impossible. I have had blogger friends visit Italy and it gives me hope that I can find these tasty treats in bakeries again! However, a trip to Italy is a few years off due to our young kiddos.

This week I had some Gluten Free puff pastry sent to me by a brand to try. To be honest I haven’t cooked with puff pastry in almost 10 years so at first I didn’t even know what to make.

I turned to Pinterest and typed in “puff pastry recipes”. Just a few pictures down were beautiful pictures of Pain au Chocolat. I immediately knew what I was going to make!

Friends, these are magic! The trick of folding the dough over a couple times adds layers, lots of layers!

I recommend using dark chocolate as that is how the chocolate croissants are typically made. I used Enjoy Life Foods dark chunks and chopped them up.

In my opinion these are best enjoyed warm.

It is also important to know that these are not super sweet as the puff pastry can be used for desserts or savory dishes. So don’t take a bite thinking it will be sweet like a donut.

I shared 1 with our twins, and they thought it was good but were expecting a sweet treat.

For this recipe I used Gee Free Foods Puff Pastry. I have also heard good things about Schar’s Puff Pastry but haven’t played with it yet.

I hope you can enjoy these tasty treats! They brought back many fond memories for me!