Pain d’Epices – French Spice Bread

A classic French spice bread, this pain d’epices is made with the traditional rye flour and a warming blend of ground spices sweetened with honey. It’s basically gingerbread cake!

Why We Love This

This recipe for French spice bread is super easy and very quick to make. No special ingredients or appliances necessary, and no need to wait for the dough to rise.

Pain d’epices recipe takes the cake (pardon the pun) for sheer aromatic deliciousness. Open that oven door and we promise the aroma of ginger, cloves, cinnamon and nutmeg will fill your house and set your tummy grumbling. Take a slice, slather with butter and serve with a glass of milk or a hot cup of tea. Bliss.

Related: Colomba Cake / Galatopita Milk Pie / Greek Walnut Cake (Karidopita)

What is Pain d’epices?

Have you ever wondered why gingerbread is usually baked as a cookie, rather than as a ‘bread’? Or have you always wondered what gingerbread would taste like if it was gingercake instead? Well today’s recipe falls somewhere in the middle.

While gingerbread cookies are often sweetened with molasses or golden syrup, Pain d’epices is traditionally made with rye flour sweetened with honey.  It also reminds us a little bit of our weetbix cake and lemon ricotta cake.

Add a slathering of butter and a drizzle of honey on top of each slice and pair it with a hot cup of tea on a lazy afternoon. What a match made in heaven!

What You’ll Need

There’s a mix of classic cake baking ingredients along with the addition of a few basic spices and honey. Most should be readily available in your pantry.

How to Make Pain d’epices

Start by preheating your oven to 150˚C (300˚F), then line a loaf pan with baking paper or grease with butter.

Pop your rye flour into a large mixing bowl along with your ground spices, baking soda and baking powder.

Pour in the honey, give it a quick stir with a spoon, then blend using a spoon or stand mixer with paddle attachment on low speed.

Gradually stir in the following ingredients, one at a time: milk, sugar, egg, melted butter and salt.

Then once the mixture is well combined, pour it out into your loaf pan. Don’t forget to smooth out the top with the back of a spoon.

Bake for around 45 mins or until a skewer poked into the middle comes out clean, then bask in the aromatic deliciousness of a slice of your freshly cooked cake!

Wandercook’s Tips

• The dough mixture for pain d’epices will be quite runny compared with normal dough – falling somewhere between a true sticky dough and cake batter. This is totally fine!
• You can subtly alter the flavour of your pain d’epices depending on the style of honey you use. We recommend using high quality organic honey and rye flour for the best result. 
• For the ideal moist texture watch your baking time and don’t overcook, or your spice bread may turn out dry and crumbly. 
• Leftovers? Make it into crumbs and bake it into a chester slice!

FAQs

Variations

• To add a gorgeous glaze to your spice bread, cover with orange syrup or marmalade before baking. 
• You can use regular flour in a pinch, it will just alter the the texture and flavour slightly, but should still cook fine.
• If you’re out of honey, you can substitute with maple syrup or golden syrup.

Try these amazing recipes next:

• Italian Strawberry Muffins
• Greek Easter Biscuits (Koulourakia)
• Easy Apple Crumble with Muesli
• Burmese Semolina Cake
• Easy Ginger Fluff Sponge Cake

★ Did you make this recipe? Please leave a comment and star rating below!