About that French bread...

The reader should understand that when I rant about anything, I am not targeting any individual in particular but rather that heterogeneous mob of eccentric designers, stubborn fools, magnificent cooks, patient queue-ers, riotous strikers, lackadaisical workers, obsessed teachers, avant garde philosophers, extravagant artist, sexual miscreants, nude bathers, belligerent patriots, prideful peasants, inspired clothes designers, clever technologist, prolific writers, incessant talkers, and just plain all-around pains in the derrière collectively known as "The French".

But this diverse assemblage of inheritors of Roman order and Gaulist misdemeanor, rather than put me off living here makes it far more interesting than I could have imagined, for there seems to be in the French character as much capacity for deep, intellectual contemplation as there is for irrational behavior. It makes for interesting conversations as well as diversity in the eight o'clock news.

And, if that was not enough to justify my living here, there is the land itself. I love its tree-lined country roads, its châteaux rising up midst the grape vines, the aromas that waft from the charcuteries, the little side streets in Paris with used-book shops, and the yacht-choked marinas of Nice and Cannes, the quiet charm of the many country villages, and the fact that no matter how small the town you can always find a press shop to buy a newspaper and a café in which to read it. I love the fields in summer covered with sunflowers and white with snow in winter. The towns of the Pyrenees and Alps that come alive for a few months in the coldest part of the year and the beach side towns that do the same when the hot winds of the Mediterranean and the Atlantic finally arrive.

I love the fact that people are so proud of their towns and villages that they find something about them to celebrate and flaunt. It could be as simple as garlic or it could be as sophisticated as Jazz or Graphic Arts but every village and town seems to have a festival at one time or another.

This brings me neatly to today's subject: bread. May the 16th is St. Honores Day, the patron saint of bakers or boulangers, as they are known here. It marks the start of the "Fete du Pain" a week long celebration of the art of making bread.

Most people that come to France for short stays go away repeating the well-worn praises of French bread. And well they should because there is a lot to praise. But, when you have been around this country you come to realize that there is more to bread making here, than putting out fluffy croissants and crusty baguettes.

This country that is now called France has been cobbled together from dozens of fife domes, duke domes, kingdoms, and what have you, each with different customs, languages, traditions, and food, a fact that applies especially to bread.

The stuff they eat in the north is different from what is considered good bread in the south, or east, or west. But one things is certain: you won't catch a true French person eating at dinner the wimpy stuff tourists consider "French bread".

It is no surprise that people in France do not have the bad teeth so common to residents of the UK, and the reason, I believe is the bread they eat. Not for a true French person is that despicable "baguette ordinaire" but rather an aromatic sponge, covered with brown leather lovingly called, "pain de champagne", or country bread.

Centuries of eating this perfect substitute for a mill stone have weeded out those genes incapable of producing teeth that can bite the head off of a nail. Those marvelous choppers you see in a 90 year old woman are white, in spite of the strong coffee and smoking, just as the teeth of a beaver are kept in prime condition from biting into all that wood.

But, this affection that the French have for patent-leather bread crust has given us two other marvelous institutions: the pocket knife and dunking.

Anyone familiar with French farm life or French movies has witnessed the following scene: the farmer comes in from a hard day of milking cows, tilling fields, and drinking wine, and he sits down at the rough, wooden table to have dinner. The wife takes a pot the size of a small bathtub from the fireplace and places it on the table. In the pot there is the entire produce of a small vegetable garden and one or two lambs. The farmer spies a brown mound at the center of the table, he grabs it and places the thing under his arm (go give it more flavor and to hold it steady) and the takes out a "pocket" knife the size of his forearm and open a blade that would scare a Spanish gypsy into abandoning a knife fight.

With his shiny blade he cuts a slice comparable to a surfboard and puts the remainder of the mound back on the table. Meanwhile, the wife has ladled enough vegetables and meat onto the farmer's plate to fill the stand he usually sets up in the town's market on Sundays. So, now he takes the surfboard and dunks the end into the steaming soup, bites off the sodden part, then proceeds to tear of chunks of the surfboard to throw into the soup to give it some body, you see.

Although the habit of cutting bread with these sabers disguised as pocket knives is now mostly confined to the countryside, dunking is not. My wife is not beyond carefully spreading butter and jam on a piece of bread and then dunking the whole thing in her coffee.

The first time I saw this spectacle, I stared, blinked, and then asked, "Why do you do that?" With impeccable French rhetorical flair she answered, "Why do I do what?"

Dunking extends way beyond the breakfast or dinner tables, too. People will dunk cookies and biscuits into wine, fruit into liquors, and, according to my wife, sugar cubes into port or cognac to give to children--in the old days, apparently it is discouraged now.

But, going back to bread: as you may know, the French eat their meals backward, that is, they have their salad and cheese after the main courses, not before as we tend to do in the Americas. And so, there is a variety of breads that accompany each dish. Small slices of baguette are toasted for the foie gras and champagne served as an appetizer, thinly sliced, yellow crusted bread with the soup and a dark thing that looks like mahogany wood served with the cheese. But, no matter what the bread served, I have to do away with the crust because to me it feels like I am chewing and old car fan belt. My wife "harumps" at this in such a way that I sense she is saying, "You'll never be French!".

Finally, I will tell you that when we were in Mexico, I showed my wife the small, fluffy breads we call "French bread".

"What are these for?" she said handling the bread as if it were a piece of useless crockery.

"Well, people have them at dinner," I said.

"Ah, bon?" she answered skeptically.

"Yes, we stuff them with anything: you know, ham, cheese, beans, or fried eggs."

"What a silly notion," she said laughing, "they are so soft they must come apart!"

I didn't know what to say to that. Perhaps she was right.

Tomorrow: why one must never wash vegetables.