Confessions of a French Baker (3 page)

With his
levain
and his skill, Great-grandfather Auzet would stop at each farm on his route, and turn the farmer's flour into a batch of bread before moving on to his next call. In villages, he would use the communal oven. Wherever he went, he brought
unpeu de bonheur
, leaving behind him a trail of warm and aromatic kitchens. Not surprisingly, he was a popular visitor.

Great-grandfather Auet

He had a son, Baptistin, who took up his father's
metier
, although by this time the traveling baker was being replaced by the stationary
boulangerie.
Baptistin set up shop in the shadow of the Cavaillon cathedral, making bread the way his father had made it.

Those were the days when farmers came into town each week with their fruit and vegetables, their chickens and rabbits, to sell them at the market in the Place du Clos. Transport was slow and four-legged, either mule or horse, and the journey into Cavaillon started well before dawn. Illumination on the pitch black roads was provided by an oil lamp,
le fanau
, hung on the side of the cart. Gerard Auzet's father remembers, as a boy, traveling with an elderly uncle from Lagnes to Cavaillon on one of those predawn expeditions. The lamp was lit, the cart set off—and the old man went to sleep. The horse was left in charge of the navigation. He was so accustomed to the route that he even knew his master's favorite cafe, where he would stop when he finally reached town.

Roger Auiet, far left, 1941

Another generation took over in 1939, when Roger Auzet put on his apron and learned his craft. By 1947, he had his own
boulangerie
in Oppede, moving to the present site in Cavaillon in 1951. He is retired now, but he still visits the bakery, keeping an eye on things, glancing occasionally at a photograph on the wall that commemorates a high point in his long career.

Fifty years after starting to work as a baker, at a time when most men would be happy to leave the heat of the ovens and retire, Roger decided to give himself another challenge. He would compete for the grand prize of baking, to become the baker's baker, a
Meilleur Ouvrier de France.

Auzet
fils et pèere
Gerard and Roger

No baker can even attempt this without a total mastery of technique. But to win the competition, he must also be a sculptor in dough, able to create
unepiece artis-tique.
To do so, he can choose any subject—a face, an animal, an arrangement of flowers, a bunch of grapes, a musical instrument, even a building. Roger's choice was, in fact, a building of sorts—the Eiffel Tower, which had just reached its hundredth anniversary.

It is hard to imagine the patience and the talent
required to make a scale model of something so detailed and complex in any material, let alone dough. It is difficult enough using wood or metal, which are at least rigid; it must be infinitely more difficult using soft, malleable dough that needs not only to be perfectly formed but also perfectly baked. One slip of the fingers, a miscalculation of the oven temperature, and all that remains is a deformed lump.

Roger's technical description of the building of the tower is more like an engineer's blueprint than an artistic brief:

The result was a masterpiece, and Roger won his prize. Alas for the tower, it was knocked over while on display in the shop. But the photograph, the medal, and the distinction remain, a tribute to a man's passion for his work.

P
EOPLE
who are truly expert at what they do tend to suffer from a disarming form of modesty. They make their hard-earned skill or God-given knack sound almost effortless. Nothing to it, really, they say. I could teach you to do it in no time.

It's a seductive theory, and I have been optimistic enough to believe it on several occasions: horseback riding, computer literacy, rose pruning, omelette making—these are just a few of the accomplishments that I was told I could master by following a handful of simple directions. Each time I followed as best I could. Each time my efforts were crowned by failure.

Now here I am with another expert, Gerard Auzet, and he tells me that anyone can make good bread.

“Even me?” I ask him.

He looks at me for a moment, and I can sense a certain amount of quite justifiable doubt. And yet, finally, he nods. “Even you,” he says.

He goes on to explain that successful baking is largely a question of using only the best ingredients—
nobles, sains, etfrais
are his exact words (noble, healthy, and fresh)—of arming yourself with some basic equipment, and of having the ability to count up to 56. This is 56° centigrade, the combined temperature of the air in the kitchen, the flour, and the water. For example: If the temperature in the kitchen is 20°C and the flour is 22°C, then the water needs to be 14°C. A degree or so of difference among these three doesn't matter as long as the total adds up to 56. And if your ingredients are as they should be, the rest, according to Gerard, is simple. Alas, that's not quite the case once you cross the Atlantic. In America we have found that conversions to the rule of 56 just don't work, perhaps because of the ingredients or higher temperatures in the kitchen. That's why we specify Fahrenheit temperatures (and American measures) in all the recipes.

You will need a set of kitchen scales, an oven with a good thick
plaque
, or hot plate, white Type 55 or Type
65 flour,
¹
table salt, some baker's yeast, and pure water. You are now ready to attack the recipes. These, as you will see, start with the plain classic breads, but also include some slightly more complicated and ambitious variations using herbs and spices, fruit and nuts. Don't let these intimidate you. Once you have the basic baking technique under control, all things are possible.

“Lepain est I'une desplus belles creations de Uhomme.
”