My Life in France Read online

  And so began the Great French Bread Experiment, one of the most difficult, elaborate, frustrating, and satisfying challenges I have ever undertaken.

  I was immersed in our dessert chapter at the time, and delegated the early bread experiments to Paul. He had made his own bread as a young man, and soon he’d turned our kitchen into the Irving Street Boulangerie. The ingredients for bread were always the same: flour, yeast, water, and salt. But the difficulty was that there were ten thousand ways of combining these simple elements. Every little detail was important, we learned: the freshness of the yeast, the type of flour, the time of rising, the way one kneaded the dough, the amount of heat and moisture in the oven, even the weather.

  Paul hung rising baguettes in dish towels from closed kitchen drawers. To emulate steam, he squirted the baking loaves with water sprayed from a little rubber spray bottle. By the fall of 1967, he and I were baking loaves (and other things, like croissants) side by side on a daily basis, and giving them to our neighbors to try. We sent sample “baguettes” wrapped in brown paper to Judith, in New York. She later admitted they looked like “the poor twisted limbs of an old olive tree, all gnarled and misshapen.” They tasted all right, but they weren’t anything like real French bread.

  It would eventually take us two years and something like 284 pounds of flour to try out all the home-style recipes for French bread we could find. We used two French textbooks on baking and tutored ourselves on the fine points of yeasts and flours, yet our best efforts still fell short.

  Simca had no interest in our breadworks and did not participate at all. But I didn’t care if she, or anyone else, was not interested. I was simply fascinated by bread and was determined to learn how to bake it for myself. You have to do it and do it, until you get it right.

  One day I read a newspaper article about Professor Raymond Calvel, an eminent baker and teacher at the École Française de Meunerie. When I wrote him, he encouraged me to come to Paris. Paul and I took one of our loaves to show him, as well as the ingredients we used—American all-purpose flour, yeast, and salt. As soon as we walked into his school and saw row upon row of perfectly baked loaves, I felt mortified and tried to throw our amateur efforts away.

  Making baguettes with Professor Calvel

  In the course of one afternoon, Professor Calvel showed us what we’d been doing wrong, and taught us all about making proper French bread. Every step in his process was different from anything we had heard of, read about, or seen. His dough was soft and sticky; he let it rise slowly in a cool place, twice, to triple its original volume, because the dough must ripen to develop its natural flavor and proper texture. The way one folded and shaped the loaves was important, Calvel said, as was the flour’s gluten content, because, in baking, a gluten cloak encloses the loaf and keeps the proper shape.

  I took copious notes on how the dough should look and feel, and the position of the baker’s hands, in each step. Paul snapped photographs.

  Calvel used a straight razor to slash at an angle the top of the risen loaves before sliding them into the oven. This opened up the bread’s gluten cloak and allowed a decorative bulge of dough to swell through the crust.

  By the end of the day, our loaves were turning out just right, and I was feeling euphoric. It was as though the sun in all his glory had suddenly broken through the shades of gloom!

  Excited, Paul and I rushed back to Cambridge and started baking bread while Professor Calvel’s words still rang in our ears.

  There remained a few problems to work out.

  First, what kind of American flour (which has a higher gluten content than French flour) could be used in place of the softer, unbleached French flour? We conducted numerous experiments, and although Calvel loathed bleached flours, we found that typical all-purpose bleached American flour worked just fine.

  Next came the challenge of transforming a home oven into a simulated baker’s oven, with a hot surface for the bread to bake on, and some kind of simple but effective steam-generating contraption. These elements were necessary for one to get just the right rise and just the crisp crust of true French bread. Eventually Paul’s Yankee ingenuity solved the first problem, when he slid a tile made of asbestos cement onto the oven rack to heat up with the oven: a perfect, affordable baking surface. But creating the all-important burst of steam, which forms the crust, was more difficult. Eventually we discovered that, by placing a pan of cold water in the bottom of the oven, and dropping a very hot brick (or stone, or metal ax-head) into it, one could produce a perfect steam-puff.

  Et voilà! We had created the first successful recipe ever for making French bread—the long, crunchy, yeasty, golden loaf that is like no other bread in texture and flavor—with American flour in a home oven. What a triumph!

  KNOPF WAS HOPING that we’d finish our manuscript for Mastering II by December 1967. But, with our many detours and delays, there was no way we would make that deadline. I wanted to do this book right, and I didn’t like to be rushed unduly. It wasn’t just the writing that took time. I wanted to explore and explain every ingredient, and make every mistake, so that a recipe could be smoothly translated to the home kitchen.

  “When is that second volume of Mastering going to be done?” people would ask.

  “When it’s done,” I’d reply.

  II. PITCHOUNIANS

  ON THE OVERNIGHT FLIGHT from Boston to Paris in December 1968, the plane shuddered, creaked, and bobbed up and down like a lobster boat in a storm. My six-foot-two-inch frame was squinched into a too-tight seat, I didn’t sleep a wink and was grumpy when we landed in cloudy, gray Paris. There we boarded a smaller plane, filled with old peasants heading home for the holiday, and flew to Nice. The clouds beneath us remained thick for the entire length of France. But as we neared the Mediterranean, the snowy Alps rose up majestically, and we could see a patchwork of fields below—first white-on-white with snow, then brown with a powder dusting, then all green. Finally, we were racing over the red volcanic rock and turquoise blue water of the coast, as we circled and lost altitude.

  Touching down at the sunny Nice airport, we were greeted by colorful pansies, swaying palm trees, and Simca. She began talking, rat-a-tat-tat, as soon as we stepped off the plane. We all trooped into the airport restaurant for our ritual lunch of oysters, filet de sole, and sparkly Riesling. The charming waiters flocked to our table and shook our hands like old friends.

  “Ahhhh, we’re back in France!” Paul said as we drove along country lanes to La Pitchoune. I could feel my shoulders unhunch.

  With Jeanne Villa

  The following night, we were hypnotized by our television, which showed us little humans what our big blue earth looked like from the heavens, for the first time, as seen by an American space capsule jetting to the moon. It was strange and thrilling to be sitting in our cozy Provençal living room, listening to the astronauts talk loud and clear, as if Apollo 8 were right next door. On the other end of the technical-efficiency scale, meanwhile, were the local workmen. Back in April, a welder had come to measure our terrace for a canisse sunshade, an awning that fits over a metal frame. He was a wonderfully charming chap, who huffed and puffed and talked a lot, and then disappeared. When Paul had tried to stir the man’s stumps in June, there was no response. Now it was the end of the year, and the welder and our canisse were still MIA. What could we do but shrug? It was annoying but hardly an emergency, like the one at Le Mas Vieux.

  Over there, the badly laid water pipes had frozen in the chilly night, and Jean had to drive down to Rancurel’s farm to fill trash barrels with water to flush the toilets. Furthermore, he and Simca were furious that their renovations, which were supposed to have been finished by September, were still ongoing. The workmen finally applied the last coat of white paint to the kitchen walls on New Year’s Eve.

  One of the best things about Bramafam was Jeanne Villa, the roly-poly, pint-sized helper/cook/companion who had faithfully served Simca for forty years. She was a salt-of-the-earth Provençal p
easant, who shuffled about in ripped tennis sneakers and a big sunhat, trailed by a menagerie of animals. Jeanne could neither read nor write, but she could communicate with chickens, cats, doves, and dogs. She had a Gabonese parrot, who liked to squawk “Bonjour, grosse mémère!” (“Hello, you fat old thing!”). Jeanne was a wonderfully tough old bird who did much of the shopping and upkeep of Le Mas Vieux. She loved to eat, was a natural cook, and was a great source of earthy recipes.

  Laurent was the gardener, and he, too, was a leathery old character who loved to talk and worked like an ox. Simca ordered bushels of seeds from catalogues and was a mad planter, but neither she nor Jean cared much for weeding and watering the garden. Jeanne and Laurent kept the Fischbachers’ big old property operating smoothly.

  Just after Christmas, I bought some flowers in the market at Mouans to spiff up La Peetch for Vogue, which was sending a team to do a story on us cookery-bookers at work. The writer, Mary Henry, a blonde, energetic forty-five-year-old American, interviewed Simca, Paul, and me, and took pages of notes in longhand. The photographer, Marc Riboud, a small, twinkle-eyed forty-year-old Frenchman, shot something like two hundred pictures of us with his four Pentax cameras and a bagful of lenses and films that Paul eyed enviously. Later, it would turn out that Simca’s feelings had been hurt, as she felt the journalists had focused on me instead of the two of us. I hadn’t really noticed it at the time. But when we discussed the matter in private, Paul said, in effect, “I told you so.” (He never scolded, but he made his meaning clear.) He claimed that I had protected Simca from the full knowledge of how popular The French Chef had become in the U.S.A., and that she was belatedly catching on. I should have given her some warning before Vogue showed up on our doorstep, he said.

  Perhaps he was right. But Simca was 50 percent of the book, a proud Frenchwoman, and a good friend of mine. I had no intention of making her feel like a second-class citizen.

  ON DECEMBER 30, Jim Beard flew into our warm bright Provence from dank London, and as he stepped out of the plane he seemed to expand like a giant sunflower. By now we were all very good friends. A familiar Pitchounian, he sniffed around the house noting minor changes since his visit the year before. Then we sat down and made a list of things to do while he was visiting: cook together, visit restaurants, see the Maeght Museum in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, and go to Monte Carlo.

  At seven-thirty the next morning, the last day of the year, Paul threw open the big wooden shutters and let out a startled yell: “Gad!” Our red-brown landscape had been covered in two inches of sparkling white snow. Gobs of the stuff melted off the olive trees as the sun rose and warmed our hillside. Next door, Jean made a racket as he spun the little wheels of his little car uselessly for about ten minutes, until he finally gained traction and slithered down the driveway much too fast with a triumphant look backward at us.

  That evening, we welcomed in 1969 with fresh pâté de foie gras and champagne at Le Mas Vieux, and didn’t get to bed until 1:30 a.m. The cool air, sparkling stars, and semi-white landscape fit the occasion perfectly.

  When Jim and I cooked together, we were known as “Gigi,” as in “Jim and Julie,” with the letter “J” pronounced the French way. We Gigis spent New Year’s Day cooking le dîner de la Nouvelle Année for seven people—including Les Fischbachers and a gang of local friends. The weather held up splendidly, and we began at 2:00 p.m. with Americanos on our terrace. Moving inside, we had fresh foie gras panné à l’anglaise et sauté au beurre, paired with a Chassagne-Montrachet ’59. Next came a filet de boeuf stuffed with a Catalan mixture of onion, garlic, ham, black olives, thyme, and rosemary, all bound together with egg. It was paired with a 1964 Pommard, and was superb. Then salade verte, une tarte aux pommes, plus cheese and fruit and more wine. The conversation was loud and fun, and mostly about food. It was a leisurely, nearly perfect meal, and we didn’t finish until five-thirty that evening. Jeanne Villa helped us cook, serve, and wash up. And then we took a slow walk down the road as the sun dipped behind the hill and the cold air settled into the valley.

  Two days later, we drove over to Monte Carlo for lunch at one of my favorite places, the Hôtel de Paris, next to the casino. Entering that hotel was a fascinating dip into La Grande Époque, from the baroque decor to the perfect service. But I had built my expectations so high that the actual experience of the place was an anticlimax. The clientele was mostly ancient and rich, and the food was only so-so. Later, we learned that the hotel had added a new top floor, with striking views of the city and harbor, and a much fresher ambience. Zut! We had muffed it! After dinner we dipped into the casino. While Paul and I wandered from Roulette to Chemin de Fer, looking at the people and the enormous naughty paintings of naked ladies, Jim played the slot machines. He claimed he was lucky in casinos. Sure enough, he won fifty-five francs. Then he lost them all. By the end of the evening, he was up two francs from where he had started. “Better than being two francs down!” he said, beaming.

  Paul making photographs for the illustrator

  We returned to Cambridge in February, and I dove into deep research on the mysteries of couscous. Originally a North African dish, it had—like Italian spaghetti, American turkey, and English pouding—become “French” over the last forty-odd years. (Paul remembered eating heaps of couscous at the Mosquée de Paris back in the 1920s.) As with other national dishes, like bouillabaisse, curry, or paella, every expert claimed to know the “real” recipe, but there was no definitive list of ingredients. Basically, couscous was steamed semolina served with whatever toppings the cook had on hand: lamb, chicken, eggplant, onions, etc.; it was always served with some kind of sauce au piment bien fort, plus saffron, cumin, cloves, and so on. After a week of tinkering with various recipes, filling Guinea Pig Number One to the brim with my efforts, and creating a heap of typewritten pages on the subject, I concluded that couscous did not belong in our book after all. It wasn’t wasted effort: I knew I’d use this dish at some point, just not in Mastering, Volume II.

  Meanwhile, Paul and I spent hours doing a photo session showing how to make boudin blanc sausages. We tried two methods: one using pig’s intestines, the other using cheesecloth. Then we did a shoot of my hands making un saucisson en brioche, a wonder-dish that we consumed with a splendid red Burgundy. We had fun, just the two of us, tinkering with food and cameras.

  These sausage works were the result of another of Judith Jones’s useful suggestions: “Why don’t you include a chapter on charcuterie?” This, like her suggestion on bread, had come out of Judith’s own love of homemade sausage and her frustration at not finding it in American stores. “Charcuterie is such an essential flavor of French life,” Judith reminded me. “I remember seeing people in Paris in the late 1940s standing in line with their toes sticking out of their slippers, yet willing to pay for fresh charcuterie. It would be a real addition to the book.”

  Chair cuite means meat that is cooked, and traditional charcuterie was based on pork in all its forms, from terrines to pâtés to cured hams. But few French householders bothered to make their own charcuterie any longer, because it was so easy to go to the specialty shops and buy all manner of terrines, preserved goose, sausages, molds of parsleyed ham, fresh liver pâté, and so on. Nowadays, charcuteries had branched out to sell everything from ready-to-heat lobster dishes to salads, canned goods, and liqueurs. We in America didn’t have a charcuterie store on every other corner, so I set about researching recipes and experimenting with garlic sausages.

  I had never made my own sausage before, and was amazed at how deliciously rewarding a simple homemade sausage patty could be. It is only freshly ground pork mixed with salt and spices, after all, but it tasted the way one dreams sausage meat should. And since I was the sausage-maker, I knew exactly what had gone into it. Soon I had homemade links hanging from hooks over the stove and draped from the kitchen door.

  The sausage chapter was a very concentrated burst of work, with some splendid eating and one bilious attack along the way. When I typ
ed the final period and sat back in my chair, Paul declared: “Bravo—you deserve a medal-of-honor made of gilded pig tripes!”

  III. LOUP EN CROûTE

  IN THE SPRING OF 1969, Paul and I were en route from Paris to La Pitchoune when we detoured to Vouzeron, in the Sologne, the little town where Louisette (formerly Bertholle) de Nalèche and her new husband, Henri, lived. The region, in the Cher Department, is noted for its great green forests teeming with animal life. Stag-hunting was still popular there, and it was conducted in the classical manner established in medieval times. The costumes, protocols, jargon, dogs, special trumpet calls, and elaborate manners remained just as they had in the time of the kings named Louis (XIII, XIV, XV, XVI). Sixteen separate stag-hunts were held in that part of France every year, and for those who partook it was almost a religious way of life. Henri, aka Comte de Nalèche, Louisette’s husband, ran one of the sixteen. His pack of eighty-six stag hounds were world-famous because of being so carefully bred that they all looked very much alike. Amazingly, the pack master knew each dog by name. Henri took us for a visit to the kennel and the horse stable and explained about the ceremonial system of killing a wild stag based on the cor de chasse trumpets, which are similar to but more beautiful than English horns. There were about twenty different trumpet calls, each indicating a stage of the hunt: the dogs are circling; the stag is in the water; the scent is lost; the stag breaks from the forest; etc. It was a weird and fascinating business. As Henri described it, I could sense the life of the court, the separation of courtiers from average citizens, the huge sums it must cost to maintain this ancient hunting tradition.

  Louisette seemed very happy indeed. Her house was lovely, with a wide green lawn in the back that had an astonishing 150-year-old cryptomeria pine tree, and a nice feeling of deep French country to it. It suited her.