Skip to main content

Bread in Paris.


Bread is a serious issue for the Parisians!

We learned very fast after moving in our apartment in St Cloud, that bread wasn’t just bread. The first days we bought bread everywhere we passed a bakeshop on our way home from the Metro station.

I think it was the third day after we moved in that I met my neighbor, in casu the very friendly elderly woman whom lived on the ground floor, greeted me ‘bonjour’ when I came in with my bread.

And after some small talk about where we were from -ah! Des Belges- she asked me ‘the’ question: where do you buy your bread? And that moment I learned that bread is a serious matter for a Parisian!

She explained me that you have to pick your Boulangerie (bakeshop) and stick to it. The neighborhood Boulangerie is more than just a place to get your bread, it’s a local institution with their own protocols and like the local Brasserie (café/coffee shop/restaurant) the place to go as everybody does who lives in the neighborhood.

And I learned fast!

So, the next morning at 6.30 am I went out to find the Boulangerie and noticed that I wasn’t the only one attracted by the addictive smell of fresh baked bread. Honestly just thinking about that smell makes my mouth watering till today. After lining up patiently, because Parisians have their conversation with the woman who are serving.

In Belgium and many other countries I bought bread the shop attendants are students with a part-time job or young girls who are just selling bread. But not in Paris! The people behind the counter are connected with their product. Very often the one who is baking those breads is their husband, father, son,… or are employees who are working with the family for many years.

So that morning I lined up, greeted nearly everybody with a big smile and a ‘Bonjour! But I noticed that I got different bread than the others. They went out with oven fresh warm bread while mine was cold. Why to pick a Boulangerie and stick to it if you are treated differently?

My neighbor came to the rescue again. She explained me that the people in the Boulangerie didn’t know me, I spoke French with a Belgian accent, was obvious somebody who just was passing a vacation in the neighborhood. So why selling the warm bread to a tourist whom, perhaps, is not around anymore in a few days? No, the warm oven fresh baguettes are for ‘les gens du quartier’ (the locals).

Ok, point taken, lesson learned! Time for some strategy planning with my wife.
From now on, and till the time I had to start working we would go to the Boulangerie together. I would stay outside, waving at the attendants, say ‘bonjour’ to the people while my wife was lining up and bought bread. Still the cold one.

The next day same scenario but with a twist: we brought our youngest son. And it was ‘bingo’!
The other mama’s in the line and my wife were talking about where we lived, how many children and were they would go to school. She got out the Boulangerie with warm bread, straight out of the oven and my son was offered a cookie.

Mission accomplished, we were accepted as ‘des gens du quartier’ now.

In those days my wife worked as an ‘aide enseignante’ (assistant teacher) in a kindergarten for three hours a day were she was mostly occupied reading stories and assisting the teacher with the art projects of the children. Having this job gave her something to do every day but most important it helped us enormously with our integration in the ‘quartier’ as all the parents of the children were at the school gate and they became very fast her acquaintances. Same story with the Parent Teachers Meetings in the school of the boys.

After one month my wife could spent hours at the Boulangerie. There was always somebody she knew and everybody has to tell their stories. 



Parisians buy fresh bread twice a day, in the morning and in the evening to eat with their supper. Parisians, in fact all the French, eat bread with every meal.

The Boulangerie has a new load of baguettes from 5.30 pm on till 7.30 even 8 pm. Thus, on my way home from the Metro station it was my turn to buy the bread.

And thanks to my wife and the integration in the neighborhood, I got warm, oven fresh baguettes!

More:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJchGOCIBDM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Knnq7NClIto
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Lunch in Paris: Le Plat du Jour

When we lived in Paris all of us had, during the weekdays, lunch outside. My wife had her lunch with her colleagues at the school she worked as assistant teacher, the kids in school and me in the simple café/restaurant Le Barbusse across the street of the bank. Le Barbusse, by the way the same place I had my breakfast or at least an espresso in the morning, offered every day choice of ‘Plat du Jour’, mostly one fish dish and one meat, poultry or in wintertime a stew. The Plat du Jour are simple, rustic, grandmother–style dishes prepared with seasonal products and offered at a very competitive price. And they are not only prepared ‘grand-mother style”, they are grand-mother serving sizes and quality also! The variety of the dishes, the fact you can choose makes the Plat du Jour very popular and appreciated by the regulars.  In fact, most neighborhood restaurants like La Barbusse make their business with the regular customers of the offices in the street passing by f...
Post a Comment
Read more

Breakfast in Paris

Our mothers always told us that breakfast is the most important meal of the day and that we have to be sure we include all food groups or the ‘pyramid’: bread or cereals, fruits, dairy,… But breakfast traditions are different. In Belgium we were used to eat ‘heavy’ breakfasts with bread, butter, eggs, cheese, and ham. The British eat baked beans, eggs, bacon, mushrooms, black pudding, toast and marmalade and in Scandinavia fish is on the breakfast table. But not in Paris! Breakfast in Paris is, like lunch, mostly an ‘outdoor’ activity. Only few families have breakfast together during weekdays as most schools offer breakfast for the kids before classes and the parents have ‘something’ on the way to the office. During my stint in Paris, I usually took my breakfast in the bar/restaurant Le Barbusse in front of our office building. In every neighborhood with offices or workshops there are plenty of those small neighborh...
Post a Comment
Read more

Coffee in Paris

I grew up with coffee. The first thing in the morning my grandmother did was to put the kettle on the stove to boil water to prepare coffee. This were the days before the electric coffeemaker and the coffee was brewed with a paper filter. Once brewed it was transferred to a big thermos who had his place in the middle of the table. All day long. My memories on that coffee are not that good. In fact you could hardly call it coffee, more hot colored water with a slightly taste that reminds you on coffee. But nobody could convince my grandmother to use or more coffee in her filter or to use less water. Somewhere when I was 10 or 12 years old my father bought a, for those days, very modern thing: an electric percolator and at least we had ‘real’ coffee. But the thermos stayed on the table as my grandmother still brewed ‘her’ coffee with her filter! Coffee in Paris is surely not brewed the way my grandmother did. ‘Le café’, the drink, is an institution, a cultural phenom...
Post a Comment
Read more