“Chapelure” means breadcrumbs. My French is a sad collection of words without any connecting grammar often arising from situations we have found ourselves in. Like “fuite” – leak, “ne marche pas” – doesn’t work, “epingle de suritee” – safety pin. Chapelure is one that comes from struggling through French cookery books.
There are ALWAYS cars parked outside boulangeries just to annoy bread tourists.
Back in May we survived a couple of weeks in France by which I mean that, unlike the previous autumn, neither of us got covid or ended up in intensive care with pneumonia, obliterating the holiday and forcing a return home a week before scheduled.
Quite by accident we ended up staying in an appartment in Bordeaux within walking distance of three top class bakeries; one we had to give a miss – when you’re not even self-catering there’s a limit to the amount of bread you can sample.
The first, Au Petrin Mossagais, I visited before more than ten years ago. They produce a weird twisted loaf called Pain Gascon.
Briefly it says that before the war bread was only bought once a fortnight so Pain Gascon has a hard, thick crust to preserve all the flavours. The crumb is not white because of the leaven they use – no additives or preservatives. Baked in a woodburning oven at a low temperature for up to an hour and a half to produce a hard crust. Keeps naturally for several days. (Feel free to improve on my translation.)
This time I approached the bakery with respect but not quite the same reverence I had ten years ago when it felt to me like some sort of holy shrine. But they’ve been baking here since 1765 and you can feel the history.
Here’s a pretty impressive selection of their breads. But I can’t help feeling that the Pain Gascon is a bit of a throw-back they continue to bake because of its historic origins- people don’t have to buy their bread once a fortnight anymore so why not adapt? Huh, I should stop quibbling and be grateful choices like this are available … Bakery Facebook page
I was interested in checking out two more bakers while we were in Bordeaux who both take a modern approach to older baking methods, natural leavening and organic, locally grown traditional wheat varieties.
The first is Paulin Leuridan who operates under the name Pain Paulin (obviously a jokey play on Pain Poilane). I’ve been aware of him as a Facebook Friend since before he opened his first bakery and I’m amazed how he has expanded in just a few years inspite of the setbacks of the pandemic.
He opened his first boulangerie in 2017 in Petit Piquey on the long peninsula that is the North side of the Basin d’Arcachon after 10 years of planning and learning his trade. You have to check out this place – and the whole concept.
Here’s an article about him from four years back. Since this time he’s opened a boulangerie in Le Bouscat, Bordeaux and two other outlets in Chartrons and by the Grand Theatre in the city centre. As well as his commitment and baking skills he clearly has a flair for publicity and a sense of style that you wouldn’t expect to find in your average baker.
We wound up staying 200 yards from the Chartrons outlet so at least got to try a couple of baguettes and a small boule. But it was very much end of the day stuff: we were only around for a few nights, the priority being to have a good time and restore our faith in travel after covid and last year’s fiasco – we had bars and restaurants and walks by the river to fit in too.
So we never got to see the Bouscat boulangerie or took the bus down to Petit-Piquet. Next time …
The other baker I wanted to see was Bartolo Calderone who runs an excellent pizzeria and a baking school all based on leaven and local organic flours. We ate there and chatted with him in Autumn 2019, i.e. a few months before covid shut the world down. Wrote it up here.
BUT, wouldn’t you know it, he was only opening on Sunday evenings until later in the year and we couldn’t make Sunday …
Link to website.
Second week we moved up to Saint George de Didonne at the mouth of the Gironde estuary. Won’t bore you with the detail. No destination bakeries. But you have to have bread and luckily in the town square Au Fournil de Saint Georges turned out to be an excellent all round bakery.
I mean the queue says it all – wouldn’t you like to see that lined up outside your bakery? The shop is cunningly arranged so the queue has to crawl past an enticing patisserie counter about 25 feet long, followed by a similar length of bread counter, and customers leave through a separate door to cut down on congestion.
Don’t think there was any pain au levain but their baguette was very acceptable.
Saint Georges also reminded us that, although there are excellent French bakers, a great deal of bread, contrary to popular belief, is mediocre verging on the pretty awful. First night made the mistake of buying a supermarket baguette designed to look like the real rustic thing. Entirely my fault – I’ve suffered supermarket baguettes before.
Au Founil was closed on Mondays and we bought a Baguette de Tradition from Festival. In France individual mills tie bakers in to their products and produce various formulas and flour mixes so that boulangeries can advertise a product that the customer will recognise. As far as I can see, Festival can supply bakers with premises and finance, the brand name, as well as flour mixes – in simple terms, a franchise. In itself this might not be a bad thing – but their bag de trad was bad …
Part Two
In October we returned for an even shorter stay. A dead cat to mourn, an anniversary to celebrate we thought we were owed a week away.
Located Pain Paulin’s second outlet by Bordeaux’s Grand Theatre – closed the first time (only opened mornings) and virtually out of bread the second – managed a small tin wholemeal.
Meanwhile Signor Calderone at Capperi is still only selling pizzas on Sunday evenings and somehow seems to be incorporating this into his baking courses. Sunday evening we were arriving in Arcachon so no pizzas for us again.
Final thought. In its time Poilâne was a great, innovative bakery. Lionel Poilâne died in 2002 and his daughter, Apollonia, has shown herself to be very adept at keeping the advertising flowing.
For several years now every Monoprix store in France has had a stand like the one pictured displaying sliced and packaged Poilâne bread.
How can this be good for the French artisan bread tradition?
People who bake seriously soon see through the star baker mythology. There are good bakers all over France but despite the quality (and variety) of their bread they don’t have the Poilâne caché in the mind of the public.
So, pre-packed sliced bread gets trundled all over France – and it’s a very big country.
(There’s also a lengthy book to be written about the myth of good French bread, the one that says on every street corner there’s a fantastic bakery turning out amazing bread. Just like anywhere else, in France good bakers have to be sought out.)
The PArtisan Baker 