Author Archives: Ofer

Bread

Posted on by
1

While Jennifer has been writing about butter, I have been eating bread and planning a blog post on the topic.

Bottom line: The bread is tasty !!

In Paris, there are bakeries all around. The french still shop daily, so while there are supermarkets and such – there is an economy for small neighborhood shops for everything: butchers, greengrocers and bakeries. I also read this in the Wikipedia article

French bread is required by law to avoid preservatives, and as a result bread goes stale in under 24 hours, thus baking baguettes is a daily occurrence, unlike sourdough bread which is baked generally once or twice a week, due to the natural preservatives in a sourdough starter.

Where we live it seems like there are even more bakeries than the average – see the map below with markers of some of the bakeries around our apartment. Click on the markers  for notes and pictures.


View Bakeries near us in a larger map

We have been eating primarily baguette, but the bakeries are full of different breads, not  all long loafs are baguette (which literally mean stick). If you go and ask at the bakery for baguette, you will get something different than if you ask for baguette tradition which is also typically 5 or 10 centimes more expensive.

Now what makes one baguette better that others? Well it’s about texture and flavor of both the crust and the sponge. In baguette the top crust should be crisp but still chewy, the bottom firm and chewy. And then the flavor of the dough.

Every year Paris runs a competition for the best baguette. The winner gets a contract for a year to deliver to the presidential palace. In 5 of the 6 past years the winner has been from the 18th arrondissement where we live. We have tasted the baguette at the winners of 2012,2011,2010 – all walking distance from our house, though two of them are on the other  side of the “hill”.

My favorite bread and the one we tend to get most often is “la Parisse” from a close-by bakery which makes a bread recipe designed by Meilleur Ouvrier de France (MOF), Gaëtan Paris (yes that’s his name). The bread is baked by selected bakeries. The Parisse (according to his website), get its flavor from natural fermentation. Its a very mild sourdough.  With Jennifer’s butter  its heaven.

I’ll end with a bread story. I am in my sweats walking back home from the other side of the hill back home with a baguette sticking out of a short bag which I had been eating from the end. A french tourist guide with an English speaking group roaming Monmartre stopped me to take a group picture and explained to the one of the tourist that “this is how the French eat their baguette on the way home from the bakery.”


Misc Update

Posted on by
1


We are behind on posting. I have been working on a bread post that I *will* finish today !! we were in Toulouse a couple weeks ago for 5 days, and are headed for a a long weekend to London tomorrow. I am excited about going on the EuroStar – 2 1/4 hours to London !!!

Feeling that this is the end of our Paris stay – we leave at the end of the month and I have a feeling   haven’t really done much. We have also started spending time on planning the African part of the trip which is coming up.

On the culinary front,  I have tried making Breton Galettes de Sarrasin (buckwheat pancakes) a couple of times – not quite as good as in Bretagne – but not too shabby.

We washed the Crepes down with some Gaillac wine we purchased from Christophe (pic below), a chatty wine shop owner in Albi. The wine is made of Braucol grapes an old variety that is a relative of Cabernet Sauvignon – very nice.

Speaking of wine merchants, we stopped by a local shop yesterday and spent 30-40 minutes chatting with the owner – a very colorful guy. He opened some white wine – drank with us and offered more to other folks that walked into the shop that he chatted up. Talked about wine, cigarettes and smoking, Obama and sex.  His charm does work.. we left with 4 bottles 😉

We have two sets of friends coming next week  and the end of the month – so maybe they will drive us to be a bit more touristy and see some of the sights we still would like to see.

 

Les Crottes

Posted on by
3

Dog turds abound on French pavements.  Many do not pick up after their dogs. So far I’ve only stepped in one (Though I have been saved by Jennifer  a few times….). We’ve seen them in Paris and other places we’ve visited. We’ve often seen notices about them. Here is one from Vitré:


Rough translation:

2nd message:

The owner of the big dog that dumped again today between 8:30 and 9:30. They should bring a bag and collect the droppings of their dog.

Perfect Saturday along Canal St Martin

Posted on by
Reply

Alliance Francais

Posted on by
1

I just completed 3 weeks of intensive french at Alliance Francaise. It’s been probably 20+ years since I last studied french (at AF in New York) and over 10 years since I visited France and used my French. I am at level where I can get by with  day to day stuff, can understand quite a lot, but have difficulty speaking (make many errors) and can’t easily have a deep discussion. I was extremely rusty, but the past 3 weeks have been very useful. Reviewed lots of the grammar and things are slowly coming back. Manage to spend the whole evening speaking mostly only french with local friends….

Class was 5 days a week from 1:30pm-5:30pm at AF in the Latin Quarter. 20 minutes on the metro from our Apartment.

I was joined in class by an eclectic and fun group of people with a wide range of nationalities: (Ecuador, Japan, Russia, Poland, Austria, USA, China, Iran,  Spain, Ukraine, Italy, Turkey), Ages (18-60+) and professions (Doctor, Au pair and priest to name a few). Everyone is eager to learn and we all spoke French to each other during breaks. Teachers (Tony and Miriem) are excellent with a great attitude and materials are also well thought out. The picture is from a student organized cheese  tasting last Friday after Class:

Next week I’ll start a Oral workshop twice a week and continue doing some self study on solidifying what we worked on in the past 3 weeks.

P.S – Jennifer is close to fluent in French (though she denies it ;-))

 

Valle de Belagua Hike

Posted on by
1

We did two day hikes while in Pays Basque, one in France, the other in Spain. I particularly liked this one in the Valle de Belagua, Spain as it was extremely diverse . The area is just on the border of France and Spain and we had read that there were karst (see wikipedia) formations in the area – so we asked the tourist office if they could suggest any hikes. The person at the tourist office said there were no organized trails and sent us to a cross country ski area and said we should walk the trails. When we got to the area – we couldn’t figure where to go, but across the parking lot was a trail-head so we decided to try it. We were not disappointed.  Photos and videos below:

Our Paris Apartment

Posted on by
5

It took a few days, but we found a great apartment in the 18th arrondissement (district) in Paris. Its great because it is nice and big without breaking our budget: 75 square meters one bedroom apartment, which is huge – most places we looked at were in the 40ish sq m. We are close to the metro on two good lines (though most places in Paris are). The area is very diverse with a lot of ethnic food and markets as well as more upscale stores. We rented it from a couple who are traveling to China for three months – exactly the time we needed.  The building is an old one with tall ceilings and a beautiful staircase and hallway. We are on a main street, but have double glazed windows.

There are 6 (if not more) bakeries (we have only tried 3 so far) within 1 block of us. Click here if you want to stroll out neighborhood with Google Street View.