By SHIVANI VORAJAN. 16, 2014  We didn’t come for the miles of shoreline, the promise of seafood feasts or the many history-rich towns. Even the dramatic views and craggy cliffs weren’t a draw. There was only one thing that lured my husband, Mahir, and me to Brittany in northwestern France: salted butter caramel candies.  Sweets have always tested my resistance, but salted butter caramels have left me defenseless since I first tasted them in a Paris shop selling handmade candies more than a decade ago.  There’s no shortage of salted caramel iterations in my hometown, New York City. What was once an exotic-sounding indulgence now seems ubiquitous, from salted caramel chocolate bars sold at the corner drugstore to restaurants offering their rendition of it in cakes, ice creams and sauces.  But the original buttery wrapped candies that I fell hard for, called caramels au beurre salé, originated in Brittany, and I decided to enjoy them in their most authentic form in the place they were born.  With a population of 3.2 million in an area that’s roughly 13,000 square miles, Brittany hugs the Atlantic Ocean and is famous for its beaches and picturesque coastline. Our visit was concentrated around the Lorient area on the southern coast, which has several notable caramel candy shops.  Eating handmade caramels in Brittany is a longstanding ritual in France, according to the New York-based French pastry chef François Payard, who grew up in Nice. “I remember visiting the area in the summer with my family as a young boy, and everyone used to visit their favorite caramel shops to have the candies,” he said. “Nowadays, very few of them still exist.”  He was right. We found bakeries, stores and restaurants selling caramels, but no caramel-only spots. Even the establishments that started off exclusively selling candies have expanded to cookies and other sweets. I also discovered that making salted caramel candies the old-fashioned way by hand is a laborious process that only a handful of candy makers have maintained, and machines have intervened as interest in these treats has become global.  Our goal was to try to find caramels where taste wasn’t compromised by relying too much on modern technology. The superior ones were rich on the palate with their quality ingredients, luxuriously velvety and just slightly sticky, and our search led us to five places where offering them in their best version possible is a priority.  The first caramel maker we met, Maelig Georgelin, owns the elegant patisserie Au Petit Prince in the tiny village of Étel and handcrafts every step. His old-school methodology might suggest that his is a longtime endeavor, but the 30-year-old is one of a few young pastry chefs in Brittany who are reviving an increasingly rare craft.  When we walked in the door of the compact shop, we were greeted by a case of refined desserts behind glass — macarons, napoleons and assorted cakes — along with a line of people waiting to buy them. We had an appointment with Mr. Georgelin and expected to do a tasting and interview, but he had other plans.  “Instead of telling you about my caramels, I thought I would have you help me make them,” he said as he led us to his kitchen on the second floor. He told us that although the chefs creating caramels usually have their own techniques, most caramel candy recipes have the same steps and ingredients: the region’s famous salted butter, heavy cream, sugar, glucose and sometimes vanilla extract and a hint of fleur de sel, also from the area. “It’s the quality of cream, whether it’s regular or double fat, and the cooking temperature of the mixture, that’s the difference between caramels,” he said.  He said he believes that using double cream with 30 percent fat from a small dairy nearby and having the patience to heat the butter, cream and sugar to 230 degrees is what sets the 1,500 caramels he makes a year apart from others. Stirring the sugar until it transformed into a gooey, clear mixture was the first step before we added the other ingredients, and as Mahir and I took turns stirring over Mr. Georgelin’s tiny stove for more than a half-hour, the aroma of the bubbling mixture became intoxicating. “I grew up making caramels with my mother in our kitchen; it’s the only way I know how, and I want to preserve this integrity in my work,” he said.  Spreading the mixture on cookie sheets and evening it out with a spatula follows, and then a one-day cooling in the refrigerator. Then, Mr. Georgelin and one other employee do the cutting and wrapping by hand. The slightly irregularly shaped pieces with their imperfect clear wrapping served to us by their beaming creator were especially tempting. And, with their creamy feel and finish, their taste was a highlight of the trip.  Our next stop was Kerjeanne, a large and uninspiring-looking bakery in the village of Belz that is a 15-minute drive from Étel. Here, locals hurry in to pick up Breton specialties like butter biscuits and cakes, and half the shop is lined with tacky mugs and key chains to entice tourists. Emmanuel Dumaire, 50, purchased the store in 2008 from the family who started it 50 years ago, and he employs Lydia Justum, 45, who was one of the first caramel candy makers when Kerjeanne began making them in 1985. The difference is that she now has gadgets to help her out.  Although she heats the sugar over a small stove top and also cuts manually with a knife, an electric mixer heated to 210 degrees and a wrapping machine speed up the process. “I’m trying to stay as true to the old way as much as I can, but I was spending hours on just the wrapping and blending, so the machines help me a lot,” she said.  Her homemade handiwork wasn’t lacking in taste — the candy was chewy but not overly so and had an agreeable, slightly crunchy texture with bits of sugar that had not completely melted down.  We spent much of the next day in the resort town of Quiberon, which is known for its numerous caramel shops and is a scenic 45-minute drive from Belz along the coastline in thick beach traffic. Although salted caramels have been a part of Brittany’s culture for more than a half-century — one of the oldest shops, La Maison Guella in Cancale in the north, opened in 1920 — the 60-year-old La Maison d’Armorine, based in Quiberon, is one of the names credited with popularizing them in the last decade.  Raymond Audebert started the business as a beach stand selling salted caramel candies and eventually opened a still-thriving storefront that faces the ocean and has a very old-fashioned feel with light wooden floors and walls and vintage candy tins lining the shelves. Mr. Audebert has since died, and his grandson Alain, 58, runs La Maison d’Armorine, which has expanded considerably since its early days and relies on machines to produce 30 million pieces a year. The work happens in a facility in Quiberon, where visitors can watch the several dozen workers through large glass windows execute the mixing in heated copper machines and the cutting and wrapping in another machine.  Gildas Peron, the sales director, emphasized that although the homespun touch wasn’t there, the company uses only the best butter, cream and other ingredients it can find. “What we use is what you would find in your grandmother’s kitchen in the country,” he said. The flavor certainly wasn’t lacking: The candies were especially creamy and, thanks to good fleur de sel, weren’t overwhelmingly sweet the way so many cheaply made wrapped caramels can be.  On our visit to Quiberon, we also stopped in at Henri Le Roux’s chic store on a quieter street away from masses of people on the beach. Mr. Le Roux, now retired, started off as a chocolatier in 1977 but created caramel candies after developing an affinity for Brittany’s salted butter. This turned into a machine-made endeavor in 1988, and the company was purchased by the Japanese cookie company Yoku Moku in 2006, but his signature product wasn’t less pleasurable for the change of hands. The caramels stood out from the others we tried because of their crushed almonds, hazelnuts and walnuts, which made for an appealing combination of crunchy and smooth.  An unexpected caramel discovery came on our last day when we were on the back patio of our countryside hotel, Château de Locguénolé in Kervignac, enjoying the panorama of expansive forest. Olivier Beurne, the executive chef of the property’s Michelin-starred restaurant, walked by and asked if we had yet tried the caramel candies he makes for guests. We were aware of his talents with French cuisine but not with caramels.  He led us into the large kitchen, where a cookie sheet tray of the candies was sitting on the counter. He cut off a piece, still slightly warm, handed it to us — and the most decadent, sweet butter with just a touch of welcoming saltiness melted on our tongues. “I only make them when I have time, but I don’t want to lose the by-hand tradition,” he said.  Au Petit Prince, 4, place de la République, Étel; 33-2-9755-3053; aupetitprince-etel.fr; .45 euros per caramel, or 60 cents at $1.32 to the euro.  La Maison Guella, 1, rue du Brocanteur, Cancale, 33-2-9940-8343; bretagne-caramel.com; from 5 euros a bag.  Kerjeanne, 26, route d’Auray, Belz; 33-2-9755-3897; patisseriebretonne.fr; .30 euros per caramel.  La Maison d’Armorine, Rue des Confiseurs, Quiberon; 33-2-9750-2425; maison-armorine.com; .45 euros per caramel.  Henri Le Roux, 18, rue de Port-Maria, Quiberon; 33-2-9750-0683, chocolatleroux.eu; .60 euros per caramel.  Château de Locguénolé, Kervignac; 33-2-9776-7676, chateau-de-locguenole.com; prices from 7 euros a bag.  A version of this article appears in print on January 19, 2014, on page TR10 of the New York edition with the headline: Seeking a Buttery (Not Too Sticky) Treat. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe
There are many reasons to visit this region of France. For the author, however, there was just one: caramel candies.