Notre pain de ce jour

Warning: a long essay on bread ahead

Breakfast, according to the French.

I have recently discovered Meudon’s sixth artisan boulanger.  Hidden away though it may be in the rue des Marais, and small though be its size, the baguettes I bought there were better than any bread sold anywhere in Britain.  By their piping heat, I judged that they had still been in the oven when I left the house, where, on my return, I subjected them immediately to an appropriately rigorous examination which largely took the form of lunch.  With jubilation I found the quality of this new boulanger’s handiwork entirely consistent with that of the other five’s: the radiance with warm earthy gold, the dying glowings of the oven, the perfection of the patterns sculpted by the craftsman’s hand, the structural poise of the whole, the pale underbelly below, the copper-crowned ridge above, and the crust, delicate enough to crumble exquisitely under pressure, but robust enough to protect the rich mellifluous dough (la mie) within!  And the smell (the smell, dear reader!), the scent of the French field!  The scope of the written word is transcended, almost even in French.  And this is only a baguette – I have not even mentioned the other loaves, nor the croissant, nor indeed the pâtisseries, stacked on high shelves and glittering along luminous counters.

Another gratuitous croissant photo.

Kneading my bread in my bakehouse...

If you feel, as you read this, that I have become a ‘bread snob’ (well-picked words used to describe me recently!), or alternatively very hungry all of a sudden, you do either with good reason.  The purple prose above is only slightly hyperbolic (see the view from Reims here), and bread-wise I shall be at a loss on my return to G.B.  On the other hand, it must be realised that such an attitude towards bread is entirely natural by French standards.  The Englishman becomes like a child in a sweet-shop (in a bakery), but the Frenchman expects nothing less than what I have just described.  He expects several panary establishments in a single town; he expects to find them (in Paris at least) with the official website (whose existence I have discovered far too late); he expects it even to be subsidised by the state.  One of the boulangeries has recently had its entrance refurbished jointly by the town council and by the FISAC, (the Fonds d’intervention pour les services, l’artisanat et les commerces), that is, a body which offers grants to maintain the institution of the artisan.  Now of course, he must pay for this in his taxes, but the situation reflects an element of government which is peculiarly French.

Never enough gratuitous croissant photos!.

And also a gratuitous photo of a pépito

'The front of this shop has been modernised thanks to the financial support of Meudon's Town Council and the FISAC, the Service, Artisan and Business Fund.'

 St Honorius, not perhaps at his saintliest

 Those of us in Britain who eat impatiently and without thought, who deliberately pare the meal down to its essential function, who discard anything lacking immediate material reward, and who seldom eat as families, have much to learn from the French, in this and in other things, who (far from being snobbish) express their appreciation of their daily bread by making of it an art, and by merging it with culture (The poet Francis Ponge disagrees, or does he?).  The paper bags which cradle the commonplace manna prove this: they draw the client’s attention to the baker’s adherence to tradition and to craftsmanship: ‘je pétris mon pain dans mon fournil’ (‘kneading my bread in the bakehouse’), assure him that  ‘le pain, c’est la santé!’ (Bread is health!), or regale him with the tale of St Honoré’s announcement, as a boy, of his vocation to the priesthood, of the scoffing of his nurse and of her assertion that her dough-spatula would be just as likely to burst into leaf – which of course it duly did.  Sometimes they instruct him simply, ‘À déguster sans modération!’ to enjoy without moderation, an entirely superfluous suggestion.  It is all beauty, thriving miraculously even in this age, and springing not from snobbery, but from the recognition that, once given our daily bread, we are to treat it with respect.

'Did you know?  St Honorius (Honoré) is the patron saint of bakers.  When the unruly young fellow announced to his nurse that he wanted to become a priest, she was in the middle of baking her bread.  The good woman scoffed.  "You'll be a bishop when my spatula grows leaves!"  Before her astonished eyes, the spatula began to bud with greenery.'

La gastronomie - encore une fois.

Mais qu'est-ce que c'est que ça?

Caption competition!

 The B.B.C. reported, as a trade delegation was sent to Paris this week, that British food exports to France have doubled since the year 2000.  To investigate this matter, a scheme of the utmost audacity was executed. The B.B.C. loitered outside the Louvre with Scotch eggs, cheese and pickle sandwiches and Bakewell tarts, offered them to a random sample of citizens of the République Française and filmed their responses.

I have two questions:

a "Trianon".  I think Alain Gié ought to be canonised!

1)  Were the interviewees merely being polite?  After all, as I have mentioned once or twice, the French are accustomed to, and indeed expect, dishes which it is beyond the English even to describe, let alone forge.  The image to the right shows an example:  click for a double portion. 

The result of a gathering of English people

2)   Actually, what am I saying?  I am rather partial to a Bakewell tart!  Why could they not have conducted this experiment a week ago?   I was at this very spot with a good friend, who was visiting.  We were soaked in accordance with the ubi Anglorum ibi pluvia rule, but it was no hardship that a cheese and pickle sandwich, prepared by the B.B.C. no less, could not have eased substantially.  Students are always hungry!

The good friend (Edward), who has hopefully dried off by now, is spending his year abroad as a language assistant in Reims (N.E. of Paris).  He blogs prolifically and much less ponderously here.  It is remarkable how different our year abroad arrangements are to each other, though neither will have been less profoundly formative than the other  for it.

Meudon: municipalité magnifique!

Eastwards across the Val-Fleury.

I am grateful, particularly given the casse-tête of finding accommodation in Paris, that I have settled in an area as pleasant as Meudon.  In fact, had I not had to cast my net into the département of Hauts-de-Seine and halfway to Versailles, I would probably not otherwise have encountered the town.  I am renting a bedroom in the Val-Fleury, built in the steep valley running northwards to the Seine's first right-hand swerve after Paris. Piled upon the western side is much of the main town - detached houses, modest blocks of flats, much greenery, a street of well-patronised shops and the proud mairie.  The lower (northern) part of town descends to the river at Bas-Meudon or Meudon-sur-Seine, and the western end of the hill has the apt name of Bellevue.  To the south and higher still there is an enormous forêt domaniale (state-owned forest - yes, five kilometres from the great metropolis!), which accounts for the 100 square metres of green space per resident, and beyond which is Meudon-la-Forêt, a new town constructed in the 1960s.

Topographical map of central Ile-de-France.

The altitude of parts of Meudon is remarkable, particularly in comparison to the land which surrounds it and with respect to its proximity to Paris.  Much of the town is about a hundred metres above sea level (point culminant 175m) and this height conspires with the sharp descent towards the Seine to give an almost vertiginous prospect of the city.  From the grande terrasse of the Observatoire, which occupies the site of an old château destroyed in the Franco-Prussian war, the panorama is particularly breathtaking.  Foreign students who have lately been a little indulgent in their consumption of croissants may find the ascent breathtaking in a different way.

A view north and east from the Grande Terrasse - Val-Fleury is in the foreground, and beyond the head of the valley the great swathe of Paris: the Seine, Tour Eiffel, the Tour Montparnasse, les Invalides and the Sacré-Coeur.  Click to enlarge!

le Viaduc de Meudon.

The viaduct which strides across the mouth of the valley was constructed between 1838 and 1840 to carry the railway between Paris Montparnasse and Versailles.  The construction of railways had not hitherto been permitted and this was the first railway in France, authorised when hundreds of miles of track had already been laid in Great Britain.  Geographically, the railway has already reached an altitude of eighty-five metres and the viaduct is thirty-six metres high and 143m long.  Trains pass along this line to Chartres, Le Mans, Rennes and Brest, and the station has a service every fifteen minutes which can convey your correspondent to Paris Montparnasse (at the foot of the tall grey Tour Montparnasse in the distance, in the photograph to the right) in ten minutes.  

A view north over Bas-Meudon towards Paris.

There are certain disadvantages to living in the Parisian suburbs, such as the time and expense of the daily journey to Paris III, but the advantages are more important to me.  For instance, Meudon provides, as many suburbs do, a poumon vert and a refuge from Paris's perpetual energy, and, far from the tread of tourists and the spectacles maintained partly for them, I can observe a different and more ordinary France, along with its people and their wonderful culture - and certainly without the sound of English!  In fact, Meudon is so different from Paris that I wonder if I will actually gain the experience of two years abroad in the space of one - one year rummaging through glorious literature in the 5e arrondissement, and one year puffing up twisting hills with glorious baguettes or partaking of glorious steak in the Brasserie de la Mairie.  

rue de Paris.

And a final gem of information (you will be relieved to hear!) - which links the widow of Molière and Johnny Depp: I have found out to my astonishment that both have lived here!  Indeed Monsieur Depp might still dwell within a mile's radius of where I type this.  I will look out for red bandanas.


More pictures will follow.