Pane Pugliese

I wasn't planning to bring you a bread recipe today, but when this chubby loaf came out of the oven I found it irresistible. It's the first time I've made bread in weeks: my once thrillingly active starter has been languishing at the bottom of the refrigerator looking gray and neglected (though I know it will be quick to forgive me).
The recipe is a remarkably simple one using fast-acting yeast from Australian-born, London based bread guru Dan Lepard. The difference is that it calls for fizzy water - Dan uses Italian, I substituted Badoit - and soft 00 flour, the kind that goes into fresh pasta. Containing a spoonful of delicate-tasting Nice olive oil and Claude's incredible deep amber honey that tastes of wild mountain herbs, the dough was soft, velvety and a joy to knead by hand.
While I made tabbouleh for lunch I had Philippe take over the kneading, which he did with such enthusiasm that my marble board broke in half. Talk about stress relief!
With a creamy-colored, bouncy crumb and surprisingly distinctive honey taste, this bread reminded me of a crusty milk loaf. It's definitely going into my file of "breads to make again and again."
A little tip for Thermomix owners: when I make bread using bottled water or milk, I give the liquid 1 minute in the Thermomix at 40 C to warm it up.

Pane Pugliese
Makes 1 round loaf

Slightly adapted from an article in The Observer Food monthly.

Sponge:
1 tsp fast-rising (easy-blend) yeast
150 g 00 pasta flour
200 g sparkling water, warmed
1 tsp honey

350 g 00 flour
100 g sparkling water, warmed
2 tsp fine sea salt
1 tbsp good-quality olive oil

Cornmeal or semolina, for the baking sheet

In a large bowl, whisk together the ingredients for the sponge to make a smooth batter. Cover with a plastic bag and set aside in a warm place for 1 hour.

Add the remaining ingredients and combine with your hands or a plastic pastry scraper to form a slightly sticky dough, adding a little more water if necessary. Clean your hands and rub a marble or other work surface with 1 tsp olive oil, also rubbing some oil into your hands. Knead the dough for a few minutes, until very smooth and velvety. Return the dough to the cleaned bowl, cover with a plastic bag and set aside in a warm place to rise for 45 mins.

Turn the dough onto a lightly floured marble or other work surface and flatten with your hands, then shape into a ball. Line a small bowl with a floured tea towel, or use a linen bread basket if you have one. Place the dough seam-side up in the bowl or basket, cover with the plastic bag and let rise until doubled in volume, about 45 mins.

Meanwhile, heat the oven to 220 C, with the baking sheet in the oven and a ramekin filled with hot water on a shelf underneath it. When you're ready to bake the bread, sprinkle some cornmeal or semolina onto the hot baking sheet. Gently turn the ball of dough upside-down into your floured hand, then slide it carefully onto the baking sheet. Slash a cross in the dough using a very sharp knife or serrated bread knife.

Bake the bread (I used the convection setting) for 35-45 minutes, until golden brown and very crusty. Leave to cool on a wire rack before serving.

Socca and sundried tomato hummus

Like most people who make a sort of living from writing, I rarely spring into action until I sense a deadline looming. With just two days left to take part in Susan's Legume Love Affair, I started thinking seriously about my own passions: lentils, especially the small, flinty-green ones from the volcanic land around Puy in central France; white beans, particularly the pearly coco de Paimpol from Brittany and the coveted crop from the town of Albenga in Liguria; and chickpeas, which make up for in versatility what they lack in glamor.
Everyone loves hummus and chana dal (don't they?), but not so many people know what to do with chickpea flour. It has become a staple in my kitchen since I settled in Nice, where a curious chickpea pancake called socca is sold at stalls throughout the Old Town. Consisting of nothing more than chickpea flour, water, olive oil and salt, it probably once served as a sort of plate. These days, rough slices of it are wrapped in paper, sprinkled with pepper and eaten as a snack at any time of day or night. Socca made its way across the border from Liguria, where it's called farinata, and may have African origins.
Wherever it comes from, socca doesn't always inspire love at first sight. Bread guru Dan Lepard describes spitting out his first bite of socca in Nice before growing to appreciate this unleavened bread. I don't want to point fingers, but it may be that the socca he tried had been kept warm for too long or even (gasp!) reheated. Socca must be very, very fresh and very, very hot to be good.
The Niçois believe that only a wood-fired oven produces true socca. Don't listen to them. If your oven will heat to around 240 C (500 F or so), there is no excuse not to make socca. I love my copper socca tin, which doubles as a pizza pan, but again it's not a necessity - before investing in this, I used ordinary cake tins with great success.
I often depart from tradition slightly by adding some chopped rosemary to the socca batter; half a teaspoon of chili paste is just as welcome. With chickpeas on the brain, I was intrigued to see Mark Bittman's recipe in the New York Times this week for hummus with sundried tomato. For Susan's event, I decided to put together a double shot of chickpea by serving this with socca. I pretty much stuck to the recipe, though I felt compelled to add 1/4 cup of tahini and replaced the pimenton with Espelette pepper from the Basque region.

My little experiment had surprising results. On its own, the sun-dried tomato hummus didn't completely win me over - I think it's hard to improve on classic hummus and found the dried tomato taste a little overbearing. But with the socca the tomato hummus suddenly seemed right, its acidity and sweetness balancing the natural heaviness of the chickpeas. Plain socca will seem naked from now on.

Socca
Enough for 2 cake tins or 1 large socca or pizza pan

125 g chickpea flour (about 1 cup)
250 ml cold water (about 1 cup)
45 ml olive oil (3 tbsp)
1/2 tsp salt
1 sprig rosemary
Freshly ground pepper

In a mixing bowl, combine the water and chickpea flour. Add 15 ml (1 tbsp) olive oil, the salt and chopped rosemary leaves. Mix well until smooth. The batter should have the consistency of light cream – add water if necessary. Set aside at room temperature for at least 2 hours or, better yet, let the batter rest overnight, covered, in the refrigerator.

Heat the oven on maximum heat for at least 20 mins, with the cake tins or socca pan inside. Pour 1 tbsp olive oil into each of the 2 tins, or 2 tbsp oil into the large pan, and place in the oven to heat for 5 mins. Pour the socca batter into the tin(s). Place in the upper part of the oven.

After 5 mins, turn on the oven’s broiler (grill). Cook for 3-4 mins, until the socca starts to brown and even burn a little in spots.

To serve, cut into rough pieces and sprinkle with plenty of freshly ground pepper.

Kamut flour pizza

Homemade pizza might not seem like a very grand way to celebrate a birthday, but to that I reply: it depends on what you drink with it.
Accompanied by a bottle of velvety Taittinger Prélude made only from premier cru grapes, this humble standby became a feast worthy of a momentous event in Philippe's life. We had at first thought of takeaway pizza but decided instead, for the same price, to splurge on the best ingredients at the Italian deli.
I came home with a wobbly white ball of buffalo mozzarella, silky Parma ham, spicy sausage, marinated artichokes and bright red confit tomatoes, which are a little juicier than the sundried variety. I also made use of a fresh ewe's milk cheese I had bought at the market and baby spinach leaves (the combination pictured here). But what made the pizza really exciting - to me, anyway - was the crust, for which I used a combination of organic bread flour (type 65 in France) and kamut flour.
Last week at the Biocoop I picked up a small bag of this slightly coarse, creamy-yellow flour, which I had previously known only as the base for a dense bread sold in organic shops. I wasn't sure I wanted to make 100 per cent kamut bread at home, but I suspected it could work well in combination with other flours.
When I want to know more about anything from amaranth to quinoa I always turn to Jenni Muir's invaluable book A cook's guide to grains. Here, I was amused to learn that kamut is a made-up brand name, meaning "soul of the earth" in ancient Egyptian. The grain itself does have ancient roots, and one web site claims that its revival began when a Montana farmer planted seeds that may have come from an Egyptian king's tomb (he obtained the seeds from his son, a World War II pilot).
Whatever its origins, kamut has impressive properties. A relative of durum, it can be grown organically more easily than other wheats and is high in protein, lipids, amino acids, vitamins E and B, and minerals such as magnesium, iron and zinc. Interestingly, despite its high gluten content kamut is often tolerated by people with wheat sensitivity.
For my pizza crust I used 20 per cent kamut, resulting in a pale yellow, slightly sweet dough with a lightly crunchy texture. I mixed and kneaded it by hand, but you could of course make this dough in a food processor, mixer with a dough hook or bread machine.
I don't have a baking stone so coopted my socca tin instead, a heavy copper dish in which this Niçois chickpea pancake is traditionally baked. I let the socca tin get very hot in the oven and slid each pizza onto it, keeping the pizza on a piece of parchment paper. You could use a very hot baking tray instead, the heavier the better.

Does it seem strange to you to drink champagne with pizza? I think there are times when a really good wine tastes best with food that doesn't try to upstage it. Or maybe it's just that I would drink champagne with just about anything.

Though kamut is not a herb, it is a plant so this will be my entry for Weekend Herb Blogging, created by Kalyn of Kalyn's Kitchen and hosted this week by Truffle from What's On My Plate.

Kamut flour pizza
Serves 3 greedy or 4 average people

Apologies to American readers for the lack of cup measures, but the longer I live in France the less I "do" cup measures. Keep in mind that 130 g of flour = 1 cup. If you can't find Kamut flour, feel free to use a small quantity of whole wheat and/or semolina and/or rye flour instead.

The dough:
400 g white bread flour (15 oz)
100 g kamut flour (4 oz)
1 1/2 tsp fine sea salt
1 packet dried yeast
1 tsp light brown cane sugar (or other sugar)
325 ml warm water (1 1/3 cups)

The sauce:
1 tbsp olive oil
1 big, juicy garlic clove
400 g canned Italian crushed tomatoes (15 oz)
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp dried oregano
Freshly ground pepper, to taste

Toppings:
Pizza 1: Small pieces of buffalo mozzarella, torn by hand, thin slices of spicy cured sausage, sundried or semi-dried tomatoes
Pizza 2: Small pieces of buffalo mozzarella, torn by hand, Parma ham (prosciutto), marinated artichokes
Pizza 3: Fresh ewe's milk or goat's milk cheese, broken into pieces, sundried or semi-dried tomatoes, fresh baby spinach leaves

For the dough:
Combine the two flours and salt in a large bowl. Heat the water (I use spring water or filtered tap water, but by all means use tap water if yours tastes good!) until warm and combine with the yeast and sugar. Pour this mixture into the bowl with the flours and mix until a dough forms. I start off using a plastic pastry scraper and finish with my hands. Add a little more water if necessary to form a dough that's on the sticky side.
Wash your hands, then oil a work surface and your hands. Knead the dough for a few minutes, until smooth and velvety. Return to the bowl, cover with a plastic bag and set aside to rise for about 45 mins.

For the sauce:
Heat the olive oil in a large frying pan over a medium flame. Before it gets very hot, add the chopped garlic. Stir for 30-45 secs, just until the garlic starts to turn pale golden. Add the tomatoes, bring to a boil and add the oregano and salt. Turn the heat to medium, letting the sauce bubble and reduce until thickened (about 10-15 mins). Season with pepper to taste.

When the dough has nearly doubled in size, punch it down and divide into three balls. Set these aside to rest, covered, for a few minutes so they will be easier to roll out. Heat your oven to its maximum setting, placing the rack near the bottom of the oven. Heat your pizza stone or baking tray at the same time.

Roll out each ball of dough quite thinly on a lightly floured board and place on a sheet of parchment paper. You can pile them up if you need to, lightly flouring the surface of the dough.

Prepare the pizzas one at a time, first coating them with a moderate amount of sauce, then scattering the toppings over the sauce. Finish with a drizzling of good olive oil. Using the paper to lift the pizza, transfer it to the hot pan. Bake until the crust is golden, checking underneath to make sure it's lightly browned.

Serve the pizzas as they emerge from the oven.

Baking bread again

The nights are growing nippy here and it's dark by 6pm, but I'm not complaining. For me, the official end of the scorching Niçois summer signals the beginning of bread-baking season.
I've been baking bread on and off for most of my life, but it only started to become a real habit last year. Bread baking, like yoga, is most satisfying if you do a little of it every day - which makes sense, since both are forms of meditation. I've used every imaginable machine to mix bread dough, including my new Thermomix (with good results) and a long-since-abandoned bread machine, but I always come back to using my hands. Kneading dough only takes a few minutes, it's therapeutic for the mind and body, and the satisfaction of cutting into a hand-kneaded loaf is incomparable. Besides, who wants to scrape sticky dough off a sharp blade?
My bread baking reached a turning point when I met Dan Lepard last year. You know when you feel an almost spooky affinity with someone you have just met? Dan and I crossed paths on a press trip to Finland, and from the moment we started talking we just kept talking and talking and talking. Always about bread, and how to make it better. When we discovered a mutual passion for babas au rhum, I knew I had found a kind of dough-mate.
One of Britain's leading bakers, food writers and photographers, Dan is on a quest - or perhaps more of a mission - to improve the quality of British bread. While working as a baker in top London restaurants, necessity led him to a new way of working bread dough. Instead of kneading the dough for 10 full minutes and setting it aside, he would work it for a few seconds, ignore it for a few minutes and come back to it. Lo and behold, the gluten continued to work its magic during these rest periods and the resulting loaves were even better than conventionally kneaded bread.
Dan used this method as the basis for his beautiful book The Handmade Loaf. I bought this book soon after meeting him and over the next few weeks and months worked my way through many of the recipes. I made bread so often that the electric radiator in my kitchen became superfluous: my gas oven easily gave off enough heat to keep the room toasty.
The first and most essential step was to make my own leaven, as most of Dan's recipes call for a natural leaven even if some of them combine this with yeast. Following his detailed instructions, I produced a bubbly, friendly starter that sprang to life as soon as I refreshed it with water and flour.
These loaves are some of the best I have ever turned out, particularly the white leaven bread which could rival that of any French baker. Some of the recipes do, however, demand a certain commitment. Even as a freelance writer who works at home, I don't always find it practical to knead dough at 10 and 15-minute intervals over the course of one or two hours, or make a loaf that takes 9 1/2 hours from start to finish. I alternate these artist's loaves with simpler, quicker breads, sometimes using plain old yeast or a combination of yeast and leaven or dough from a previous batch of bread.
Enter Andrew Whitley and his book Bread Matters: The state of modern bread and a definitive guide to baking your own. As the title suggests, this book spends some time criticizing the state of industrial bread in Britain before showing ways to get around it by making your own from whole grain flours.
Having perfected Dan's leaven method I haven't really explored the one in this book, though I am intrigued by Whitley's Russian rye breads. For now I'm having fun with his second-simplest recipe, bread with old dough. Using dough from a previous batch of bread improves the quality of your loaf, and the longer you do this the better your bread will be: the famous bakery Poilâne in Paris has been using old dough since the 1930s.
Baking with old dough makes me feel slightly virtuous, almost as if I were using leaven but without the pampering attention that natural starter requires. What I also like about this recipe is that it will tolerate just about any combination of flours and the addition of seeds, raisins and/or nuts. Often I make it with half wheat and half spelt flour, adding linseed or sunflower seeds.
Dan Lepard and Andrew Whitley disagree on certain points, but I have picked up valuable advice from both that has changed the way I bake bread. These, for me, are the keys to good bread:
- Dough should be stickier than you think it should be.
If the dough is sticking to your hands, resist the urge at first to add extra flour. The wetter the dough (within reason), the moister the finished bread will be and the longer it will keep. Dan recommends oiling the board and your hands, which I often do as it keeps things tidier (and leaves my skin nice and soft). Andrew Whitley says to just keep working the dough until it becomes smooth, adding a little flour towards the end if necessary. I generally find that with French flours and in Nice's dry climate, I need to increase the liquid in British bread recipes.
- The longer dough takes to rise, the better it will be.
If you have to, you can make bread from start to finish in a couple of hours. But bread needs time to develop character, and the more you can draw out the process the better your finished loaf will be in both texture and flavor. If you work in an office all day, consider letting the dough rise slowly in the refrigerator either overnight or during the day.
- Keep the yeast to a minimum.
Dry yeast gives bread a yeasty flavor that can be overpowering, and a large quantity will make it rise too quickly. I sometimes use less yeast than Andrew Whitley calls for in his old dough recipe, with good results. I'm lucky enough to be able to find cakes of fresh yeast, which is preferred by both bakers, but I have no qualms about using dry yeast in small quantities when I have run out of fresh.
- The water temperature doesn't really matter.
My apologies to both authors, neither of whom would agree with this statement, but I don't think the home baker should get too hung up with water temperature. In winter, I use warmer (but not hot) water and in summer I use cooler (but not ice cold) water. That's it - no formulas, no thermometers.
- Protect your dough with a plastic bag.
I was washing an awful lot of tea towels before I started following Whitley's advice and re-using those pesky plastic bags from the market. The plastic shouldn't touch the dough, and you can even blow into the bag to create a kind of balloon that holds in moisture.

You might be wondering why I would even bother to bake my own bread, when I live in France. Well, I'm about to let you in on a little secret: the bread in Nice is not that good. Not compared to the incredible naturally leavened loaves I can find in Paris, anyway. A wonderful exception is the recently opened Boulangerie Lagache at 20, rue Arson, but that's a post in itself. I should note that the recipe below turns out bread that is quite unlike French bread, with its crisp crust and holey crumb.

I'm not publishing a recipe here from The Handmade Loaf because the instructions for making leaven are too long for my purposes, but I heartily recommend that you buy the book.



Basic Bread
adapted from Bread Matters

Makes 1 large or 2 small loaves

600 g flour (Whitley calls for wholemeal/wholewheat, but I usually use half organic unbleached white flour and half wholemeal wheat or spelt flour)
5 g sea salt (about 1 tsp)
400 g water (about 1 2/3 cups)
8 g (1/3 oz) fresh yeast or 1 tsp dry yeast

Measure the flour and salt into a bowl and combine. Measure the total amount of water and dissolve the yeast in about a quarter of the water. Add the yeast mixture and water to the dry ingredients and combine well (I use my trusty plastic pastry scraper from Dehillerin) until a soft dough forms, adding more water if necessary. Do not add more flour at this point.

Turn the dough out onto a large board - I use marble, even if it's a bit cool. If it's very sticky, rub your hands and the board with a little oil first. Knead the dough for 10 minutes, or until smooth and velvety. Set aside 160 g (6 oz) dough to make your next batch with old dough.

Scrape out any dry scraps from the mixing bowl, washing it if necessary, and return the dough to the bowl for its first rising. Cover with a large plastic bag, blowing into the bag if you like to form a kind of balloon. Set aside to rise in a warm place for up to 2 hours, or in the refrigerator for much longer if you wish.

When the dough has doubled in size, scrape it out onto the board and flatten it into a rectangle (if you are baking it in a loaf tin). Use a little flour so that it doesn't stick, but don't get too carried away. Roll it into a long sausage, then flatten this sausage and fold it in three. Press the dough down into a rectangle and roll it up, without tearing the dough, into a loaf shape.

Grease a large loaf tin with butter and place the dough inside, seam side down. Cover again with plastic, being sure not to let it touch the dough. Set aside to rise until it doubles in size. It should still give some resistance when gently pressed with a finger.

Preheat the oven to 230 C (475 F) or its hottest setting. Bake the loaf for 10 mins, then turn the heat down to 200 C (425 F) and bake for another 30-40 mins, until well browned all over. Turn out of the pan and cool on a rack. Try to resist cutting into the bread until it's completely cool.

Bread with old dough

Follow the above recipe, using:

500 g flour(s) of your choice (1 lb 2 oz)
4 g sea salt (slightly less than 1 tsp)
330 g water (1 1/3 cups)
8 g (1/3 oz) fresh yeast or 1 tsp dried yeast
160 g old dough (6 oz)

Knead all the ingredients except the old dough for five minutes, then add the old dough and knead until smooth.

Marie Quatrehomme

If lovingly aged cheese from every remote corner of France is not so easy to come by in Nice, Paris positively oozes with cheese possibilities. When I lived in rue Monge (home of several of the city's top bakeries, notably Le Boulanger de Monge, Eric Kayser and the lesser-known Boulangerie Grégoire), I could count five cheese shops in my neighborhood alone. Two of these were impeccably run branches of legendary fromageries, Androuët and Quatrehomme. Much as I loved popping into Marie Quatrehomme's charmingly cramped, stone-walled boutique in rue Mouffetard, sometimes for a hard-to-find hit of crumbly English cheddar, no fromagerie in Paris makes me happier than her main shop on rue de Sèvres.
Marie herself deserves much of the credit for this. Youthful looking, with a healthy glow that can only come from eating the very finest dairy products every day, she is unfailingly gracious to regular customers and one-time visitors alike. I saw definitive proof of this the day a group of 18 foreigners from a tour bus were herded into her shop on a busy Saturday morning by a tour guide who cut Marie off in mid-sentence with the words "Can I talk now?". Trying to fit that number of people into a typical Paris food shop is akin to stuffing the population of Delhi into a phone booth, but Marie, to her great credit, remained polite and unflustered.
I can't help but remark that several of the city's best cheese shops are run by women: besides Quatrehomme, there is Marie-Anne Cantin, Josiane Molard in rue des Martyrs, and Virginie Boularouah of Chez Virginie in the 18th, to name just a few. Then again, there are some pretty talented men in the milk business too, such as Philippe Alléosse and Laurent Dubois. Marie came to this profession by marriage after working in early childhood education, but in the past 15 years has established herself as one of the top fromagères in the country: she was the first woman to win the coveted Meilleur Ouvrier de France title, awarded to artisans who succeed at a gruelling competition.
So what makes her cheese so good? Well, first of all, she knows her producers personally, which means that she understands what they are trying to accomplish. This allows her to finish the ageing process in her own cellars with a real respect for the cheese. Her marque de fabrique, or trademark, is slow ageing in cool cellars to reduce the risk of the cheese going "off." One of her treasures is 36-month-old comté from producer Marcel Petite, a cheese from near the border with Switzerland that develops crackly crystals and an ever-more-complex nutty flavor as it ages (I never leave her shop without a chunk of this). She also has a soft spot for monastery cheeses, explaining that in France it was monks who originally taught farmers how to make cheese. Her shelf of goat cheeses is remarkable and following my visit last week I ate my way through an entire pot of her emerald-green "mousse" made only with fresh goat cheese and pesto. The bakery next door had the perfect baguette à l'ancienne to accompany this, which I think was called the Authentique (someone correct me if I'm wrong!).
Unlike many French fromagers, Marie respects the cheese of other countries and even has a whole shelf devoted to foreign cheeses - a rare sight, believe me. When I visited her shop with a couple from Texas she was able to talk to them about the state's best-known cheese maker, Paula Lambert. Marie has warm memories of the time she has spent in the United States, which is why she always takes the time to greet American customers. "Everyone was so kind to me, I'd like to give something back," she says. Her cheese is a gift in itself, but her ready smile makes it taste even better.
Fromagerie Quatrehomme, 62 rue de Sèvres, 7th, 01 47 34 33 45.

Brioche at Bread & Roses

The story of the French and English has not always been one of deep understanding and mutual admiration of one another's cuisine.
That is changing thanks to Paris cafés such as Rose Bakery and the similarly named but unrelated Bread & Roses, which are patching up centuries of misunderstanding by displaying homey scones and crumbles next to chic lemon tarts and quiches.
I'll seize any opportunity to visit Bread & Roses and this morning's Edible Paris guided tour with a food-loving family of Americans from Colorado provided the perfect excuse to re-enter its kitchen.
Owner Philippe Tailleur is an unusual personality in the Paris food world. He ran a profitable shopping center outside Paris before trading it in for this run-down bakery just downstairs from his apartment and a few steps from the Luxembourg Gardens. In a triumph of quality over convenience, he now devotes himself to producing some of the finest organic bread and most tempting prepared goods in Paris (just try to resist the puff-pastry tarts loaded with roasted vegetables). He is a proud Anglophile and claims that his cheesecake is "the best this side of the Atlantic."
The scene in the basement kitchen is the opposite of Poilâne, where bare-chested bakers in traditional cream-colored linen shorts toil before the Roman wood-fired oven. Tailleur has invested in the most modern equipment: the mixers alone apparently cost €100,000 each and there is a nifty machine for dividing a batch of dough into evenly-sized balls. Stacks of white plastic bins hold the various organic flours and seeds that go into about a dozen different speciality breads, which are produced in small quantities - only about 10-20 loaves of each per day. Bakers shape the loaves by hand and are encouraged to invent new recipes, such as the wonderful currant-studded ficelle (a very thin baguette). To keep the bakery side of things small and confidential, Tailleur doesn't post the word boulangerie outside and the bread is displayed at the back of the shop.
On the other side of the kitchen a few cooks work on salads, savory tarts and pastries. Today they were making strawberry tiramisu, layering syrup-soaked Italian biscuits with strawberries, blueberries and mascarpone cream. One of the cooks was assembling a giant tiramisu in a big glass bowl which had been provided by one of the bakery's well-heeled customers. This is a popular request, she said. "That way they can say they made it themselves."
I was also intrigued by the Bread & Roses take on the tropézienne, a rich brioche-and-custard cake that originated in St-Tropez (a bit of a contradiction when you consider the beachwear there). Here it's filled with a lighter version of crème pâtissière and inauthentic strawberries, which add a welcome fresh note.
Brioche has become a specialty lately and I picked up one of the cloud-like golden loaves to try at home. Even more than croissant, brioche has the ability to transform a massive slab of butter into something puffy and ethereal that melts on the tongue. I wasn't hungry when I tasted it, but that didn't stop me from going back for a second slice, just to be sure it was as glorious as it seemed.
The rest of the loaf, toasted and perhaps spread with a little strawberry jam, will give me reason enough to wake up tomorrow morning.
Bread and Roses, 7 rue de Fleurus, 6th, 01 42 22 06 06.

A bread moment

Like Jacques Chirac, I’m borrowing a Paris pad from a friend for the next few months (part-time in my case). Mine doesn’t overlook the Seine but a leafy courtyard in a quiet street near Porte de Champerret, a part of the 17th I had never thought to explore. It’s proving less sleepy than I expected: impeccably groomed women in sundresses and high heels and dazzling men in black suits and crisp white shirts populate the café terraces on place du Maréchal Juin. My haunt on the place until recently was the café Les Hortensias, where I had been going for WiFi access. This time, though, I couldn't get it to work. When I asked the waiter if there might be a problem he replied, "Don't ask me, I'm anti-technology." Hmph. If they ran out of tea, would he declare he is anti-tea?
This morning, for the first time, I ventured out looking for bread. It didn't take me long to come across a boulangerie that looked very promising indeed. Raoul Maeder's boulangerie won the city's prestigious "best baguette" prize in 2000 and 2002, and the "best galette des rois" prize in 2004. What first drew my eye to this bakery were the pretzels hanging from a metal rack, an unusual sight in Paris and a sign that the boulanger is Alsatian. I would have liked to try one but by now I was on a mission.
"I'd like the baguette that won the prize," I said.
Full marks to the salesgirl for asking me whether I'd like it "bien cuit, pas trop cuit ou moyen" (well browned, not too brown or medium) even though I hadn't specified. Just think how many times a day she sells these baguettes and still she bothers to ask. This baguette was a Rétrodor, which means that the boulanger follows a specific set of guidelines that are outlined on the paper wrapper. I was thrilled to see that the holes should be "sauvage" (wild) and irregular.
Back at the apartment, I started to eat the baguette - and couldn't stop. Crunchy crusted, not too salty, not too sour, with a creamy-coloured crumb and wild holes, this was everything a baguette à l'ancienne should be. I couldn't help asking myself whether baguettes really were like this in ancient times, or if the baguette à l'ancienne is a modern invention. What does it really matter, when they taste so good?
I nibbled at the baguette as I worked and, at lunch, picked up a few thin slices of ham from the local butcher and some AOC butter from Deux Sèvres to make a ham sandwich that needed neither mustard nor gherkins to make it perfect. Bravo, Mr. Maeder. Your baguette is truly exemplary.
Pâtisserie Alsacienne
158 bd Berthier, 17th, 01 46 22 50 73.