There are very few places in the world where a gourmet guide to baguettes would find a publisher; only in France could two rival treatises soon be vying for foodies’ favours.
Le Guide des Boulangeries de Paris: the best 180 addresses, and Chercher le Pain: a guide to the best 100 bakers of Paris, are France’s first meticulously researched, passionately written, Michelin-type guidebooks to the most cherished of its national symbols.
The first, which hit the bookshops last week, is by two young but dedicated unknowns, Augustin Paluel-Marmont and Michel de Rovira. The second, published in early May, is by Steven Kaplan, an eminent American historian and self-confessed baguette addict who probably knows more about French breadmaking than anyone alive.
Both are on course to be bestsellers, complementary rivals in the manner of the Michelin and the GaultMillau guides. After years of decline, the real baguette — which is to say the one made with double-fermented dough, no industrially treated yeast and zero chemical additives, rather than the fluffy, featherweight, inedible-within-hours impostor still served by far too many French bakers — is making a big comeback.
Over the past eight months, the guidebooks’ three authors, all of whom have spent time as apprentice bakers, have munched their way through more than half the 1 263 boulangeries in the French capital (the remainder having been rejected out of hand for using modern hot-air stoves rather than the traditional bread ovens).
Like the celebrated Michelin guide, they have chosen their favourites and awarded three stars (or wheat sheaves, in Kaplan’s case) to the very best, two to the next-best, and one — or none — to the rest. Points are also allocated for decor, service and presentation. According to advance reports, a mere dozen bakers warrant the ultimate accolade in Chercher le Pain; in Le Guide des Boulangers just four.
So what makes a brill baguette? For Paluel-Marmont and De Rovira, a star French stick can usually be identified merely by its appearance. ”Its regular overall form stems from careful manufacture; its harmonious volume is the sign of a dough kneaded slowly,” they write.
”The crust must be thick, crunchy and golden. Four or five knife-strokes before baking should have created the loaf’s well-developed ‘ears’. Cut in half lengthways, it must present a soft interior, creamy in colour and with a texture made up of many different-sized cavities.”
Aroma, too, is important (”It must not smell of flour”), as are taste (”Like wine, bread must open up on the tongue and develop its flavours. Chewing the crunchy crust and the soft interior together must release a wide range of flavours”), and touch (”A good baguette must crack beneath the fingers; in the words of the master baker, it must sing.”)
In all, as Kaplan, a professor of French history at Cornell University, has made clear in his previous seminal works on French bread (The Best Bread in the World: Paris bakers of the 18th century, 1996; The Return of Good Bread, 2002), the best baguettes today are basically made as all baguettes were before the second world war.
Top of the rankings in both guides, The Guardian can reveal, is Le Boulanger de Monge, Dominique Saibron’s remarkable establishment at 123 rue Monge in the 5th arrondissement. The master baker’s assistants produce, before your eyes, organic round loaves, chestnut or olive-flavoured crusty rolls and a range of mouthwatering fruit tarts. For Paluel-Marmont and De Rovira, the baguette du boulanger de Monge is ”very beautiful, with a tight cavity structure and a fatty and very soft interior”.
For Kaplan, ”the toasty, caramelised flavour of the crust perfectly complements the fruity interior”. This reporter had half of one for lunch; it was very tasty. – Guardian Unlimited Â