The trendiest bread in Paris: “Pain à la mode”

I do not think of myself as a trendsetter, but recently I collided head-on with one of the hottest trends in Paris. “Pane Vivo,” bread as a statement of all that’s best in life. That seems a lot to ask of a loaf of bread, but these days young bakers in Paris are combining the baking of bread with philosophy, law, and environmental science.

I did not seek out this trend, nor was I even looking for a loaf of bread. I was simply strolling in my neighborhood when I was offered a sample by a very aggressive saleswoman who, while I chewed, explained to me the virtues of “pane vivo,” living bread, a new product rooted in the past, focused on the future.

I was standing outside “The Bread Lab” (in English), 49, rue de Chine, in the 20^th district of Paris, a fifteen-minute walk from where I live. The bread, “Pane Vivo,” is the creation of Adriano Farano, a 41-year-old Italian and a very unconventional baker who travelled a long and winding road before, in 2020, setting out to produce what he believes to be “the best bread in the world.”

Adriano began life as a child on the Amalfitano coast south of Naples. At a young age, he became interested in journalism and politics. As a student of political science in Strasbourg, France, in 2001, he created an on-line participative magazine in six languages, the first of its kind in Europe.

From there, he moved on to Stanford University, where he had a 10-month research grant that turned into a 9-year stay in the United States. While in the Bay Area, he was dismayed because he couldn’t find a good loaf of bread for his French wife and their three children, so he decided to make his own. He even built a brick oven in his garden. His recipe? Flour, bread, salt and water, a good pair of hands and the muscle power to knead the dough.

When his wife’s mother fell ill, the family returned to France and Adriano put his entrepreneurial skills to work once again. In California, he’d fallen in love with bread-making. In France, he decided to turn his passion into a business and that’s how “Pane Vivo” was born in September 2020.

“Living bread,” according to Adriano Farano, should nourish both body and spirit. He claims that the food we eat, be it bread or anything else, should be chosen in light of its impact on our health and the environment. Farano bakes his bread with this philosophy in mind.   

First, he chooses his flour carefully, working with an agronomist and a biochemist. They have studied samples of flour from all over Europe. For “pane vivo,” Farano uses stone-ground Russello organic durum wheat flour, grown in Sicily, the same durum wheat used in the making of pasta. It is an ancient variety requiring lots of sun and three times less water than soft wheat varieties.

Farano also uses live yeast starter, never baker’s yeast. It’s the difference between lactic and alcoholic fermentation. Live yeast enables the body to assimilate all the bread’s nutrients. Baker’s yeast, the kind used in most breads, makes digestion more difficult. Russello wheat flour contains an easily digestible gluten, even for those with gluten intolerance.

But how does the bread taste? That’s the most important question, the only selling point for me.

Initially, I was not convinced. First of all, I was put off by the price: €7.25 euros or $8.50 for a pound of bread (500 grams). And then there were the names, pretentious in my book: Sapiens, Scheherazade, Esmerelda. This is bread we’re talking about! 

Yet, chewing that first bite, I had to admit, the bread was dense and delicious, nutty, slightly sweet, with the texture of moist, chewy cake. I paid the price and was handed my first loaf. At home, I discovered that toasted, the bread does not burn or crisp around the edges; it simply takes on deeper flavor. Wrapped in a cloth, stored in a breadbox, it lasts for a week, retaining its fresh taste right down to the last crumb. Since that first chance encounter, I’ve become a regular though I’ll admit, the price still makes me wince.

Adriano Farano opened his bakery just as France went into quarantine, but that has not prevented success. He and his bakery have been on prime-time TV and articles about them have appeared everywhere, in the major dailies and on-line. Pane Vivo has become a trend, one I discovered by chance.

Recently I stumbled across another bakery and another excellent organic bread. The bakery, Le Petit Grain, The Little Kernel, was created by Edward Delling-Williams in 2018, once again, not far from where I live. Like Adriano Farano, Delling-Williams is not a traditional baker and the road from his home in Bristol, England to a backstreet in the Belleville section of Paris, has taken a few surprising turns.

Today Delling-Williams, who has been interested in cooking since childhood, would define himself as a chef. However, as a young man, he studied law. In France, he became interested in immigration law, and his policy in his bakery is to hire asylum seekers and immigrants in general. When among them he finds a talented baker, as he did in one man from Sri Lanka, he puts him in charge.

In 2016, Delling-Williams opened a “neo-bistro”, Le Grand Bain, in rue Denoyez in Belleville. In 2018, a couple of steps away, he opened his bakery, where besides organic loaves, he sells simple pastries. The delicious cinnamon roll would find many fans in Schuylkill County.

Today Edward Delling-Williams is chef at a restaurant called “Buffet” in the 11^th district of Paris. Much like Farano in his baking, Delling-Williams puts his philosophy into practice in his cooking. He uses “farm-to-table” products and respects his co-workers and the environment. The last time I went to his bakery for a loaf of whole-grain bread, I was served by a woman from Russia’s Ural Mountains.

Adriano Farano and Edward Delling-Williams, neither French by birth, represent a new breed of baker in a country where bread truly is the staff of life. Neither sells the traditional baguette, but these two trendsetters have created an excellent loaf of bread. It has earned their bakeries a place among the best in France.

  

   

 

 

 

In Praise of the Humble Turnip

 

Do you remember the nursery rhyme about wishes and horses, and turnips and watches? It goes like this: “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride. / If turnips were watches, I’d wear one by my side.”

When I was a child, those verses appealed to me. I loved horses and would have liked nothing better than to wish one into existence. As for the turnip, I was learning to tell time, following the hands on a clock as they clicked off the minutes, travelling around the dial. Believing all things possessed magical qualities, if I could have just put my hands on a turnip, I was sure I could turn it into a watch.

But I never found one. In my family, we didn’t eat turnips. I’m not sure I would have known how to recognize one if I stumbled across it. Later in life, I saw turnips piled in bins at the supermarket, dull, bumpy white balls, looking none too fresh. I’d have taken a sturdy brown potato any day, especially as my mother made the best mashed potatoes around.

My prejudices against the turnip held on for much of my life and to be honest, only recently have I overcome them completely, thanks in part to covid-19 and the ensuing restrictions on daily life imposed in France.

Since last May 19^th, there has been a slight letup. The French have been able to reunite with one of their most beloved institutions: the sidewalk café. After being deprived for over a year—except for a brief interval last summer and early fall, they can once more sit down at a café terrace to enjoy a drink, a meal, a chat with friends.

 

During the long months when cafés were closed, many café and restaurant owners proposed alternatives to sitting outside at a marbled-topped table to sip a drink and watch the world go by. Some put in place ambitious take-out menus. Others sold drinks at a makeshift counter blocking entry to the café. There was just one problem. Customers did not have the right to linger; they had to take their drink or meal and go. Otherwise, the café owner could have problems with the law.

Some opted for another solution, my personal favorite, that brings me back to the humble turnip. In my neighborhood, a couple of cafés turned their terraces into farmers markets, renting sidewalk space to what the French call “maraîchers,” what Americans call “truck farmers,” who produce fruits and vegetables to sell close to home. In the 18^th and 19^th centuries, the term referred to small farmers on the outskirts of Paris who raised vegetables on marshy plots near the capital (marais, the root for the word maraîcher, = marsh). 

As the suburbs of Paris expanded, the vegetable farms disappeared, yet some held on till the end of the 20^th century. Next to the university where I taught in the suburban town of Saint-Denis, there was a truck farm right across the street and at a local supermarket, I bought vegetables grown a few feet from where I worked. Today, that same piece of land is a metro station, a student residence, and the National Archives of France.

These past months, I became the regular customer of a maraîcher selling his produce at a café located at the foot of a public stairway, the extension of one of the most romantically named streets of Paris, Passage des Soupirs, Passage of Sighs. I stopped by at least twice a week, always eager to discover his wares. Fresh spinach or asparagus, spring onions, wild garlic, Batavia and bib lettuce, the first strawberries, apples left over from the fall, but still juicy and good. And turnips. I studied them warily. It’s the farmer—and his stand disappeared, its absence taking me by surprise, before I got to ask his name—who convinced me to give them a try.

The turnips were arranged in bunches, each topped with greens. They were not like the kind I was used to seeing at the supermarket. In shape, each one looked a bit like a flattened ball. As for color, these plump little turnips were magnificent: pearly translucent white topped with a lilac blush. Of course, I bought a bunch.

The first time, I included the turnips in a vegetable soup, adding the greens, which gave a nutty flavor. I also put in onions, carrots, celery, a fennel ball, a few leaves of spinach (I make my soups with what vegetables I have on hand). After letting the vegetables simmer, I pureed them. The final product was fresh, light, and full of springtime flavor.

Next time I visited the maraîcher, I bought another bunch and followed his instructions: eat them raw. Now, I’ve got into the habit of using them in salads. After slicing the turnips paper thin, I toss them with a simple dressing of chopped garlic, olive oil, cider vinegar, a few grinds of pepper, and some salt. Then I cover them, pop them into the fridge to marinate, and the next day they are crisp and delicious. I also add them cooked to a vegetable medley with fresh peas and carrots.

In France as in many other parts of the world, turnips get a bad rap. The ancient Romans tossed them at unpopular politicians. In Europe, for centuries, the turnip was reserved for cows, pigs, sheep, and the poorest of the poor. Only in times of famine did people from all walks of life throw one into the pot. In the 19^th century world of the novels of Charles Dickens, a “turnip” was a bumbling idiot. During World War I, the Germans ate them because they had to. During World War II, it was the Brits’ turn to eat “Woolton pie,” a turnip dish named after Lord Woolton, the wartime Minister of Food, in charge of rationing. For the French, “un navet,” a turnip, is a film that is a flop.  

Without the covid-19 pandemic, I might have encountered the humble turnip in happier circumstances. Yet, our meeting has certainly been happy and fruitful, and now we are together for life. Tastes change, mine have. Today, I’d take a humble turnip over a potato any time.