A word about bread

There's been a distinct lack of blog-worthy activity over the last 10 days.  With the car at the hospital having major internal surgery, we have been staying close to home, getting the property looking good for when James and Lavinia return this Sunday.

So, this week, I thought I'd talk a bit about the "pain" - not the excruciating agony type, but the French bread type!  Pronounced "pain" as in "pan", not "pain" as in "Wayne"!  Now everyone knows the "French stick", available in supermarkets all over the world.  The French baguette is a far superior cousin, and appears in many different sizes, each with their own name.  

The "restaurant" is the big daddy of French sticks, much fatter than any other (like a lot of French daddys we've seen actually!).  

Then comes the "baguette" (literal translation = stick) which is a slimmer version, but still wider in the middle than at the ends.  This is the most popular by far, and competition is high between bakeries to sell them for around 65-70 centimes.

Slimming down even further is the "flute", which is then followed by the anorexic "ficelle".  The ficelle is a bit of a rip-off, as its so skinny there's more crust than crumb and it dries out very quickly.  Far better to buy a "batard" (no spelling mistake there) which is a half length baguette.  

Most boulangeries bake twice a day; the bread has no preservative, so becomes stale quickly.  In order to satisfy the French need for bread with every meal, they buy their bread for lunch, and then again for dinner.

Whilst the baguette and its varieties are very good, we have been far more excited by the other types of bread on offer, using different flours, grains and seeds.

Our local boulangerie makes a great "pain noir" which uses pumpernickel flour, with lots of grainy bits. 

However, our favourite is the "torte de campagne", which is a denser slightly heavier loaf with some wholemeal flour, and some sourdough.

This cute little loaf is called a "menoise" - not sure what the name refers to, but it is a lovely soft, almost sweet bread which I think is made with a high olive oil content.

This is a "batard d'olive" - a half length size, with wholemeal flour and olives.

This loaf is the closest we've found to a granary style loaf.

This is another favourite, a pure sourdough called a "rustique", which keeps for a few days.

The list goes on..........  One thing to watch out for though - just like all croissants aren't created equal, the same goes for breads with the same name.  "Pain de campagne" or "country bread" can vary hugely from one boulangerie to another.  There seem to be no rules and regulations about the flour content of loaves, so one may be purely wholemeal, another may be purely white, and there's every combination in between.
One thing that is strictly adhered to however, is the law that bread prices have to be clearly displayed in all boulangerie windows.  This shows the price of the baguette style loaves, plus the price per kilogram for the other styles - yep, most of the breads above are sold by weight!  As you can see, bakers are pretty busy over here....

We haven't even considered the organic breads - the word for organic is "bio" short for "biodynamique"!!  Can't imagine any self-respecting Frenchman paying 1.30 euros for his baguette!

By the end of this year Lew will at least be fluent in all of the bread names!  Interestingly there's not much talk of gluten intolerence over here....!!