Crozets and croziflette

Crozets are the pasta of Savoie. Small half-centimetre squares, made from buckwheat or wheat flour, once cut by hand with a knife or a rolling pin. They are cooked as a side or as a gratin. Their best-known version today is the croziflette, a reblochon gratin inspired by tartiflette.

A local pasta

The crozet comes from a mountain cooking that worked the cereals growing at altitude, including buckwheat (the “black wheat”). The dough was rolled thin then cut into small squares that were dried to keep. Buckwheat gives crozets a grey colour and a slight hazelnut taste; there are also wheat crozets, paler and more neutral. It is a rustic, filling pasta that sticks to the ribs after a day outside.

Cooking them

Crozets are cooked in boiling salted water, a little longer than ordinary pasta because they are dense, until tender but still firm. They are served simply with butter and grated cheese, or as a side to diots and meats in sauce. Drained and mixed with cream and cheese, they become a gratin.

The croziflette

Croziflette is a recent dish, invented on the tartiflette model by replacing the potatoes with crozets. The recipe follows the same logic: cooked crozets, fried onions and bacon, mixed in a gratin dish and topped with half a reblochon melted in the oven. Some add a little cream. It is a generous gratin, popular in the resorts after skiing. The name was actually registered by a brand, but the recipe belongs to everyone.

For four people: 400 g of crozets, half a reblochon, 200 g of bacon lardons, two onions, a little cream to taste. Cook the crozets, fry the onions and lardons, mix, tip into a dish, lay the reblochon cut in half rind up, and bake at 200 °C for about twenty minutes.

Pairing and context

As with tartiflette, a dry, lively Savoie white cuts the richness of the gratin well: see Savoie wines. To place crozets among the region’s other specialities, see the Savoyard specialities page. You find dry crozets in every grocery in Savoie and from producers, for example in the Aravis and Grand Massif (Samoëns) valleys.