Boulangerie: The Craft and Culture of Baking in France

In France, if you have a church and a bakery – a boulangerie – you have a village. It’s hard to say which is more important. Villagers might go to church once or twice a week, but they visit the boulangerie two or three times a day, buying baguettes fresh out of the oven for every meal. The French are a nation of bread-eaters, but not of home bread-makers. They buy their bread from boulangeries, each one an institution, each with a devoted, discerning clientele. But with the recent advent of modern bakery chains, the venerable boulangerie – almost as old as France herself – is under threat, and with it, the French craft of bread-making. Boulangerie invites you inside a French bakery to savor its smells, its bustle, its history. Author Paul Rambali has talked to boulangers – artisan bakers of bread, brioches, and croissants – and patissiers – artists who create cream-filled eclairs and glistening fruit tarts – to capture the passion that drives them to bake a baguette with a perfect crust, or to try to improve on the flavor of a strawberry. It’s a story of devoted and exacting craftsmanship, and of centuries of culinary ingenuity, told with flair and sympathy for what may be the sunset on a golden harvest.