Confessions of a French Baker Read Free

of the winter mistral, and a generous supply of precious and all-important
levain.
This is the starter, a mixture of natural yeasts and other microorganisms. It takes time to make, sometimes as much as twenty days. But it is the heart and backbone of good bread, the element of fermentation that, when added to dough, causes it to rise and gives it lightness and flavor. It is one of the oldest examples in the world of gastronomic magic.
    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 talentrequired 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:
    Make a cardboard template to the scaled-down
dimensions of the tower—four sides measuring
9 inches by 23 3/4 inches. Cover with cooking
paper, glued and lined inside with pressed paper
to avoid any deformation during cooking. Make
the four sides and cook them, joining them
together with a thin strip of dough. Place each
side in the freezer as soon as it is finished.
    Bake in a