Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread & Voilà! Revisited

Here’s a post which I wrote fifteen years ago, when we lived in France. At the time, it pointed up the difference between bread-buying in England, where bread had too often become an industrial product, and the more home-spun approach we appreciated in our small French town. Now however, artisan bakers in England are two a penny. Their stuff is good, but when we want to frighten ourselves to death, we comment to eack other ‘What WOULD our mothers have said at handing over just shy of £5 for a loaf of bread?’ That’s was Malcolm’s dad’s entire weekly earnings. No wonder I’ve taken to making my own.

Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread

25th February 2010

How could they?  I mean, what ARE they playing at?  All last week, and most of this, the baker’s shop down the road has been closed.  Instead of rising at 2.00 a.m. to get busy making baguettes, flutes, ficelles, baguettes a l’ancienne, flutes tradition, pain noir, chocolatines, croissants and so on and so on, our bakers have chosen to lie in till – ooh, 7 o’clock perhaps – and then spend the day catching up with their families – the children are on half term.

It’s a family business, our baker’s shop.  M & Mme Fonquernie owned it, and now, although officially they’ve retired, they help out all the time. M. Fonquernie is the one who drives his little white van round the local villages which have no shops, delivering bread. Their two sons have now taken over the day-to-day baking.  One is responsible for all those loaves, while the other specialises in patisserie.  Their wives divide the work of running the shop between them with Mme Fonquernie Senior’s help.

Mme. Fonquernie presides over the shop on most days.

So our morning routine has been disrupted.  First thing each day, one of us usually walks down the road to get our favourite pain noir, hot and crisp still from the oven.  The other day, the baker forgot the salt.  The bread wasn’t half so nice, but I rather liked this very human error.  It proved that our loaves are still ‘artisanale’, rather than being churned out by some computer-assisted machine.  There’s generally someone in the shop to chat to, or to walk back along the street with, and so neither of us looks on getting the bread in as a chore.

We’re lucky, I suppose, that there are three bakers in town.  Last week, we went to the shops at Castellanes to the baker there.  No pain noir at this shop, so we chose their unbleached white.  The small one’s a slender baguette shape – an Ariegeoise (female) – but buy the larger butch version, and you must ask for an Ariegeois (male).

But then what happened?  A notice appeared in the shop: from Sunday, they too would be closed for a holiday. So for a few days this week, we have to patronise shop number three. Everybody moans ‘C’est pain industriel ça’.  It’s true. It comes all the way from Lavelanet, from a bakery which has three shops.  That’s mass production, and it shows.  Roll on Thursday, when the Fonquernie family re-opens its shop doors.

And here’s a short scene from the baker’s about 18 months later, exposing the use of the most useful word there is in French …

Voilà!

7th September 2011

Here’s what happened at the baker’s this morning.  Translations appear in brackets.

Me: Oh!  Isn’t the pain bio ready yet?

Madame: Voilà! (Nope.  Quite right)

Me: So if I call in after 9, you’ll have some?  Could you please save me a loaf?

Madame:  Voilà! (Yes, and yes).  Would you like to pay now, then it’ll be all done and dusted?

Me:  Voilà! (Makes sense.  I’ll do that)

By the way, I was all grottily dressed in my oldest paint-spattered, holes-in-the-knee-ready-to-face-a-morning’s-tiling gear.  This is Laroque after all: no shame in working clothes here.

Madame:  You’re looking very chic today, if I may say so.

Me:  Voilà!  (And don’t I know it).

Why bother to learn more French?  Voilà donc!

Only the photo of Mme Fonquernie is my own. The rest come courtesy of Unsplash, and are (reading from top to bottom) by Sergio Artze; Wesual and Markus Spiske.

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Author: margaret21

I'm retired and live in North Yorkshire, where I walk , write, volunteer and travel as often as I can.

56 thoughts on “Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread & Voilà! Revisited”

  3. Margaret, what a lovely, lovely story this is. I so relate to all of it…. especially, when one‘s French is not yet up to speed, voilà, or also ‚vraiment‘ (really) and ‚bien sûr‘ (of course) are help-out words and important such as ALWAYS saying bonjour, au revoir, merci Madame, Monsieur, even if you feel not up to it…. and the price of good bread! When we lived in Devon, we bought bread on Totnes market day, made by a ‚tribe‘ somewhere around Tiverton, and it was hellish expensive even then – but we‘d live for the Fridays they were present (only every 2 to 3 weeks, and yes, during school holidays, no bread was baked for the markets). Wonderful, wonderful memories, for me too – and the same in France. We had two very good bakeries within a radius of 50 to 250m from our house. Oh the delights!

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  5. Et Voila! Who knew what a versatile mot is can be!

    And you make bread too! I’m slowly mastering the art of sourdough.

    (Re your comment on an earlier thread about us finally getting together. I haven’t forgotten. I’m still hopeful!)

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    1. It does seem a special challenge. My daughter once had a Saturday job in a French baker’s (Good choice. The freebies we had at the end of the day!) and they imported their flour from Normandy. That seemed to do the trick.

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  15. I feel you have posted this one before? A Friday Flashback perhaps? Anyway always nice to revisit a post. I can almost smell the bread in this one. I stopped making my own bread as we eat it too quickly! But you may have inspired me to start again. Voilà!

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  16. Voila Margaret, you’ve brought back a wonderful memory from our honeymoon in Paris. Visits to a boulangeries for our baguette was a daily ritual. Walk through the front door and voilà, the smell of fresh baked bread. Small, crowded, busy. I think it added to their charm. We made our selection. Our order was ready with those little packets of La vache qui ri cheese. Voila, this is one of my forever memories.

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  19. Ahh… the boulangeries of France where pain is pain and it is wonderful. Truly.

    Over three decades ago, I was in the bakery and cafe business… it was a French themed restaurant named Vie de France. We used frozen dough (sacrilege, I know) but much of our business was in the cafe business of sandwiches, salads, and soups. It was fun, but I do not miss the daily grind. I miss the customer interaction, at least most of them! In the fall of ’94, the company sponsored a trip to France we visited many boulangeries in Paris and in the countryside southwest of Paris. It was a fun trip and I learned a lot and I also got to visit my dad and stepmother for a couple of days after the company trip was finished…I’ve been back twice in 97 before my father retired and returned to the states and then in 2010 when my brothers and I took dad’s cremains to where he wished to spend eternity. We’ll be back this summer for my step-mother and my wife and I are looking forward to visiting boulangeries along the way and I enjoying a delicious crusty baguette, too.

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    1. Sadly, all is not what it used to be. Many boulangeries have closed as people do most of their shopping in supermarkets. And that frozen dough you know so well is by no means unknown in France these days. But good bread is still to be found … if you look.

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  21. Dear Margaret, this is beautiful story, subject,… I was making my own bread years ago. But now I buy, but not everyday. Bread is important in our meal, but I only eat diet bread and also without any salt… Thank you, Love, nia

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  22. Too bad the small bakeries in France our dying out, and also that decent bread in the UK is so pricey! Well done on making your own! I must get back into the habit. Since we moved we buy at the local bakery, but I do need to make more structured time and start baking again! The local bakery is part of a franchise but the bread is made on the premises – there is a choice of sourdough, ciabatta and a farm loaf and its usually sold out by late morning. Lucky to have a bakery in our village!

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