A Woodcock, Girolles, A Baguette, and a French Inn

Published by Wednesday, October 23, 2019 Permalink 0

Bécasse*, a story in two parts: A Hundred Years of Bécasse: Part I

by Dorette Snover

I wanted to fix what was wrong, here, in this – this place, this time I remembered so well. When I loved. Where I loved. And yet how ironic as here was where everything started unraveling on the first night of the Bécasse.

The drive into the setting sun from Agen made me wish we hadn’t missed our earlier train. But we had. It was my fault, but how could I leave Paris without visiting Rue Daguerre and picking up a perfect brie, rosy pears, a few chestnuts? 

The Hunt: woodcock and hunting dog.

After the hunt: woodcock and hunting dog.

We pulled into the Auberge and barely missed hitting the stone wall. The millhouse still sat undisturbed by time, hell, it was time itself. Flanked by the millpond and the rushing river, the river Gélise coursed through it, cleansing and cooling the fires inside.

Once inside it seemed important not to disturb the shadows and gentle aura by flicking a switch and turning on a light. That would be too easy. I wanted to remember, I had to be careful. With the last little bit of sun on the kitchen, I found a white plate for the bruised tomatoes from the Paris market. The girolle mushrooms looked small and insufficient, but they had survived better than the poor tomatoes; all they needed was heat and a little butter. There was plenty of time for that in the morning. I was already relishing coming down in the morning and hearing the whoosh of the burners.

French baguette/bread.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the shadows of the kitchen, the baguette might be a knotted tree, the baker’s slashes on the crust that birthed the ears and eyes of the bread. My husband drew the knife from the block and pressed its teeth against the curved length. I gently took it away and slid the saw-toothed beast back in its slot.

“Wait. “ I touched his arm. “Open the wine, while I light a fire?”

“I’m starving!” he said.

I was nervous to get it going, adjusting the air and the draft. The wood was damp, and my mind leaped ahead to the next day and perhaps finding cèpes or porcini in the forest. The bottle slowly emptied. Maybe she wouldn’t let the fire begin again. She being grand-mère. Had she forgiven me? I had kept her secret. I hadn’t told the tale of what happened here. Yet, that time was over now. It was safe to begin again. We sat back and raised our glasses. The flames twirled like the bird in the tapestry, the Bécasse, flying past the whispers of clouds over the moon, and the millhouse.

Cooking woodcocks or bécasse over a wood fire.

Cooking woodcocks or bécasse over a wood fire.

 The Auberge was unchanged, I breathed, wasn’t it? Twenty years was nothing in a place already hundreds of years old.

Much to his satisfaction we broke the crust, and playfully teased the heels of the baguette over the fire, turning and toasting. Smearing the hot pain with soft cheese.

I peered around the dark room, the fire reflecting our forms in the picture window.

To be continued.

***

*A bécasse in French is a woodcock.


Influenced by French heritage and traditions of the Pennsylvania Dutch country where she was born and raised, Dorette Snover graduated from the Culinary Institute of America, was a private chef to the rich and eccentric, a food stylist, NPR commentator, and now teaches les bases de la cuisine at her cooking school, C’est si Bon!

In writing, Dorette’s plat du jour is strong female characters woven from her thirty years in the world of cuisine. and her personal journey through landscapes of culinary history. Dorette also leads tours to France for adults looking for truffles in all the right places and for teens interested in exploring the world through a culinary map.

 

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Quintessential France: Rules for Dunking

Published by Saturday, August 8, 2015 Permalink 0

by Jonell Galloway

Croissants were made to be dunked into coffee, right? Doesn’t the very shape lends itself to dunking?

One of the first things I fell in love with in France was the general acceptance, albeit a bit common, of dunking my morning baguette-and-butter tartine or croissant in my café au lait. Dunking was forbidden in my mother’s house. She said it was common and thought Dunkin’ Donuts a travesty, so the French acceptance, though not formal, made me feel the reins of my upbringing had been loosened, if not removed.

Some French people, like Mme Verdurin in Proust’s Le Temps Retrouvé / Time Regained, actually suffer when they’re not allowed to dunk:

Mrs. Verdurin, suffering with migraines from no longer having a croissant to dunk in her café au lait, had gotten a prescription from Dr. Cottard allowing her to do it in certain restaurants, which we talked about. This was almost as difficult as getting the government to nominate a general. She ate her first croissant on the morning the newspapers reported the sinking of the Lusitania.

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The 7 Lives of Bread

Published by Wednesday, September 4, 2013 Permalink 0


The 7 Lives of Bread

by Jean-Philippe de Tonnac

Translated from the French and adapted by Jonell Galloway. Cliquez ici pour la version française.

If you ask an artisan bread baker who is passionate about his work from where he derived his passion, he or she will almost invariably reply, with no hesitation, that it arose out of the “mystery of the fermentation.” Did you know that bread is the result of an alcoholic fermentation, and the baker therefore actually manufactures alcohol? Now how does that come about, you might ask?* (If you’re interested, read the very technical footnote below.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s not really surprising that a bread baker shares the wine maker’s penchant for the processes of “alteration,” “deterioration,” and “transformation,” which make them both somewhat sorcerers, metaphorically speaking. While a baker talks about bread fermentation, the wine maker continually refers to “maceration,” and the cheese maker to “maturation.” But whether it consists of alcoholic or lactic fermentation, we are still talking about transubstantiation, a sort of “sacrament,” which creates an aura without parallel around these “artists”. They are aware of this, and they know it is at the very heart of their art. Bread baker, cheese maker, wine maker: they all fight the same battle, that of transformation of food, of true metamorphosis.

When does dough become bread?

At the same time, at what point in this long sequence of processes does the product we actually consume merit the name “bread”? This is not an easy question.

In most of our minds, bread is a loaf or a baguette; it is ciabatta in Italy and pumpernickel in Germany. In Iran, they call it sangak, in Denmark, rugbrød, in Jamaica, bammy, eaten straight out of the oven.

Can we call the fat roll of dough after kneading and shaping or left to rise “bread”? Is the dough left to ferment in the dough trough not already bread?

The large sacks of flour that the miller delivers every morning, are they not, in some ways, already bread? Is a grain that we mill, or even a seed that we plant, not bread? Is leftover bread, bread we let dry, whether on purpose or not, and that we use to make croutons for a thick winter’s soup that we lap up like a Jacques Brel song, not also bread?

This 7 Lives of Bread column will explore every facet of bread, walking you through all the phases of transformation, from seed and grain to the end product you savor.

The 7 Lives of Bread will trace the life of a loaf of bread, from its “birth” to its “death”. Bread is therefore:

  1. The grain prepared for milling.
  2. The flour that results from milling.
  3. The dough that seals the coming together of flour and water, a meeting that starts the fermentation process.
  4. The dough roll that is detached from this initial bulk of dough, and then starts down its own individual path.
  5. The dough roll when it is baked in the oven.
  6. The bread we choose at the bread bakery, or the bread we make ourselves.
  7. Stale bread, that can be baked again (the term “biscuit” means literally, in French, “cooked twice”, in the spirit of Melba toast) so as to conserve it for future use.

The latter is typically the bread of sailors and nomads. The Greeks – great seafarers — are given credit for having invented the double cooking process.

The 7 paths: in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread

In the 7 Lives of Bread, we will explore all seven paths of these seven “lives”. If fermentation is at the very heart of bread baking, it can also be considered that all steps – from the cultivation of wheat and milling to the actual bread making itself – are active participants in the transformation process.

This concept is aptly put in Genesis 3:19: In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou [art], and unto dust shalt thou return.

Bread is therefore to be taken in like mother’s milk, earned with the sweat of our brows. Symbolically, it is interesting to attempt to understand why bread has a price, the price of transformation or of conversion: the bread changes to the same degree as the man or woman who makes it.

If we look at it in this light, for ten thousand years now, it is as much bread that has shaped humankind as it is the hands of women and men who have shaped bread. The realization of this reciprocal shaping and, through it, conversion is the starting point of this column.

*The chains of starch (complex carbohydrates, which along with gluten constitute the essence of the endosperm or starchy kernel and quantitatively speaking, the essence of the wheat grain), under the action of enzymes or amylases, are broken down into simple glucose (C6 H12 O6), which is, in turn, converted by yeast or enzymes into either carbon dioxide (2CO2) and ethanol or ethyl alcohol (2C2 H5 OH) and energy.
 
Jean-Philippe de Tonnac is editor of the Dictionnaire Universel du Pain or Universal Dictionary of Bread, published in French by Éditions Laffont on October 16, 2010.
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Meetings with remarkable bakers: The baker from Kabul

Published by Friday, October 19, 2012 Permalink 0

Jean-Philippe de Tonnac

Click here to read original French version

Translated and adapted by Jonell Galloway

Dan de Mirmont, the baker from Kabul

How did it happen that you discovered French cuisine and bread making in Burma, and that today you’ve decided to teach the inhabitants of Kabul about it? This is about Dan de Mirmont’s surprising path, and the reopening of Le Bistro Bakery in October.

Ali, right, head of bread and pastry
baking, and Zobaid, left,
his assistant. Dan de Mirmont, center.

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The Dancing Bread Loaves

Published by Thursday, February 16, 2012 Permalink 0

On the UniversalBread Facebook page, Anne Le Cozannet-Renan just posted this scene of “the dancing bread loaves” from Johnny Depp‘s 1993 comedy “Benny & Joon,” including comedy scenes in the spirit of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. This scene takes place in a diner, where forks are put into two small baguette-like pieces of bread and the two baguettes are made to dance with each other.

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Food Poetry: Bread, by Linda Pastan

Published by Friday, June 10, 2011 Permalink 0

after Levchev

 

“It seems to be the five stages
of yeast, not grief,
you like to write about,”
my son says,
meaning that bread
is always rising
and falling, being broken
and eaten, in my poems.

And though he is only half serious,
I want to say to him
“bread rising in the bowl
is like breath rising in the body;”
or “if you knead the dough
with perfect tenderness,
it is like gently kneading flesh
when you make love.”
Baguette . . . pita . . . pane . . .
Challah . . . naan: bread is
the universal language, translatable
on the famished tongue.

Now it is time to open
the package of yeast
and moisten it with water,
watching for its fizz,
its blind energy–proofing
it’s called, the animate proof
of life. Everything
is ready: salt, flour, oil.
Breadcrumbs are what lead
the children home.

 

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The Revolution of French Bread Baking (part 2)

Published by Wednesday, April 20, 2011 Permalink 0

Dictionnaire Universel du Painby Jean-Philippe de Tonnac

translated and adapted by Jonell Galloway

Cliquez ici pour la version française

Franck Debieu, a guiding light in the French bread revolution?

French bread baking is quietly but surely undergoing a revolution. It is adapting to today’s changing world. And like the European Renaissance, it is, surprisingly, rediscovering its origins, its long history of tradition, and reinventing them in light of scientific discoveries and expertise, which have allowed bakers to know more about the wheat, leavening, salt and water they use to produce their works of art. They are trying to revitalize their production and sales teams. L’Etoile du Berger bakery in Sceaux, just south of Paris, is unquestionably the greatest innovator in this revitalization.

Franck Debieu, the mastermind behind l’Etoile du Berger, looks as if he just stepped out of a Fragonard painting. The mildest of manner, matched with the strictest of standards. “Matchmaking” is his obsession. This business-minded bread baker is brimming with resourcefulness. His intelligence covers all territories: from the most basic raw materials to sensitivity to the human element. This discerning approach to bread baking certainly has its place in a French society totally caught up in a phase of decomposition and recomposition. Intuitiveness, audacity, business sense: all necessary to confront the task at hand.

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