Pain d'épices Mireille Oster

The house was founded in 1933 as a family pain d'épices maker; Mireille Oster took over the business in 1997 and set about diversifying its recipes rather than simply preserving them as they were. An Ambassadrice d'Alsace, she draws on ingredients gathered during her travels, ginger, lemon, dates and goji berries among them, folding them into a spice-bread tradition built on flour, honey, spices and butter.

That diversification has produced more than 40 varieties of pain d'épices, sold from three shops across Alsace: the original in Obernai on Rue du Marché, a second in Colmar, and a third in Strasbourg, the most recent addition to the network. All three keep matching hours, open into the evening seven days a week.

The result is a business that keeps one foot in a regional tradition, Alsatian pain d'épices, while using a single owner's global travel as its main source of new recipes, an unusual combination for a category most often associated with strictly traditional, unchanging formulas.