We got some bad news on Saturday. Our bread delivery service is being cancelled effective this week. We didn't get much notice in advance. The new baker in the village, who arrived a year or two ago, has decided not to deliver his products any more. We'll have to fend for ourselves, bread-wise, for the first time since 2004. This is a disappointing development.
I probably won't be seeing our village baker's bread wrappers much any more. The fact is, to buy bread it will make a lot more sense to go into Saint-Aignan or across the river to Noyers-sur-Cher than to drive into the village. It's the same distance either way, and the supermarkets, banks, and other businesses we depend on are in the two larger towns. There's not much in the village besides a café, where I never go, the post office but there's one in Saint-Aignan too, and the salon de coiffure, where I go get a haircut four or five times a year. There won't be any reason to make a special trip down there — not just for bread.
Anyway, I get the impression that more and more local people are buying their bread at the supermarket. I see a lot of shoppers leaving the supermarket with armloads of bread. Both SuperU and Intermarché have recently starting selling higher-quality baguettes de tradition rather than just the baguettes ordinaires we could find there previously... and at lower prices, if you buy them three at a time.
Our village baker makes good bread, but the end of the delivery service will give us a chance to enjoy the bread made by the five other local bakers in the area. We can keep bread in the freezer and thaw it out day by day to have with our meals. We can also make our own breads, including French bread, pizzas, or cornbread.
Our village baker makes good bread, but the end of the delivery service will give us a chance to enjoy the bread made by the five other local bakers in the area. We can keep bread in the freezer and thaw it out day by day to have with our meals. We can also make our own breads, including French bread, pizzas, or cornbread.
Here's what the village baker's wrapper says about the traditional baguettes he makes:
Bread-making
methods
based on
your baker's
savoir-faire
To make a truly traditional French baguette, your baker uses only flour, water, salt, either yeast or a sour-dough starter... and the best of his savoir-faire : kneading the dough slowly, letting it rise for a long time, shaping the loaves by hand, and cooking the bread for just the right amount of time. This daily discipline gives the bread a unique, traditional flavor and color, and a crunchy crust.
I'm sorry about your bread delivery. This is how villages die. I'm sure the baker will regret his decision as it will drive more of his customers to wander off elsewhere to get bread. In the Tarn-et-Garonne, where one of my daughters lives, there is still a baker in the small village nearby but the bread isn't good, so she buys her bread once a week at the market in Saint Antonin and freezes it. The post office in the small village was open a few half-days a week until last Spring, when it closed definitively. The café/restaurant was bought by a British couple and they are trying to make a go of it.
ReplyDeleteOur post office is now open only in the morning, but five days a week. It will close before long, I'm sure. Our baker's letter says that he will continue delivering bread to people with mobility issues, but nobody else. That probably means people who don't drive, and the letter specifically mentions nos aînés. I can't claim to be one of those, since I can still walk and drive. I haven't had a chance to talk to the mayor about this. Her husband had heart bypass surgery a few weeks ago and I don't want to bother her. So, the fact is, since nearly everybody drives nowadays, there's not much demand for bread delivery. It certainly was convenient for us, but we'll work out solutions, the way your daughter did. I bought some bread for breakfast toast at SuperU this morning. I also noticed how many shoppers left the supermarket with 3, 6, or 12 baguettes.
DeleteThis is how villages die all over the world, including the US. It just happened here a lot sooner. When I was a kid in small town S.C. there were butchers, small neighborhood grocers, multiple dime stores & small private dept. stores, movie theater, etc etc. The bus or train no longer stops. Then people wonder why the towns empty out and people move to the city. Here you get more of a "village" experience in cities now.
ReplyDeleteMy home town in N.C. had a lot of corner grocery stores when I was growing up in the 1950s and 1960s. They are all gone now. Everybody has a car, everybody drives. The supermarkets are located on the outskirts of town, just as they are here in France.
DeleteBack in the 1990s, I remember hearing Kate and Anna McGarrigle talking about life in the province of Quebec. One of the sisters lived in Montréal, and the other lived in the countryside. They said they remembered the days when city people went out to the country to get good food. Nowadays, country people go into the city to get good food.
Ah, I just learned "une fermentation" for "rising". I didn't know that was the word. If a recipe set, "let it rise", how would that be phrased, Ken?
ReplyDeleteJudy
La pâte pousse ou lève. It rises. Elle fermente aussi.
DeleteThat is sad about the bread delivery. We really miss the good bread you get in France. Tom went to Break Boot Camp at the French Pastry School in Chicago for a week in June. Tom already made a pretty good baguette, but he learned to make a better one. The one is France ares still so much better.
ReplyDeleteThe bread here is really good, and it's different from bakery to bakery. We'll just have to drive around and buy enough bread for a few days consumption. We can keep it in the freezer. Back a dozen years ago, we got bread delivered 5 days a week. Then they cut the schedule to 4 days a week, and finally 3 days a week for the past year or two. Now no days a week. : ^ (
Delete"but the end of the delivery service will give us a chance to enjoy the bread made by the five other local bakers in the area."
ReplyDeleteI'd love to live in a place that has 5 good boulangeries, whether any of them deliver or not. Last year, during one of our one-week stays (in the Jura), there was an outstanding bakery about a 10 minute drive, and I went every morning. There was also a weekly bread delivery in the village, and when the truck arrived I saw that it was the same bakery.
This year, during our week in the Bugey/Savoie area, our village had one restaurant, one small grocery store, and a boulangerie/patisserie. And what a boulangerie it was. As good a baguette (and other breads and pastries) as I've ever had anywhere. No need to drive; it was less than a 5 minute walk.
It's just not practical, 365 days a year, to get the car out, rain or snow or shine, and drive 4 or 5 miles round-trip to a bakery to buy bread. The government should subsidize bakeries that are willing to deliver, just to keep all the bread-seekers' cars off the road and reduce pollution. We'll by baguettes in bulk and keep them in the freezer so as to limit the amount of driving we have to do. But we'll get a good variety of bread that way. It's a good thing that we bought a new freezer this summer.
DeleteToo bad about the bread...I'm old enough to remember milk men that delivered bottles of cold milk in the morning. We put the empty glass bottles back on the front porch. Haven't seen that for decades.
ReplyDeleteWe had milk delivery when I was growing up too. I suppose bread delivery at mid-morning isn't of much use or interest to people who work for a living and aren't at home at those hours, including couples in which both people work outside the home. It sure has been handy for us though, and we've bought bread every time the porteuse de pain has come by for more than a dozen years now. Tomorrow will be the last time... at least for now.
Delete