52 Loaves

by William Alexander

“That history lesson at lunch, what period of time was it covering?” I asked. “The French and Indian Wars?”

  “Oh, no, it’s quite contemporary. It’s about Michelin.”

  “The man?”

  “No, the tire company.”

  “The abbot is reading the history of a tire company?”

  “It’s rather interesting, in fact.”

  Not as interesting as the discovery that the monks had daily “story time.” And that monotone chant! If I did readings like that, I’d clear customers out of a bookstore faster than a bomb threat. But of course the abbot had a captive audience.

  I thought about this style of narration later and decided that like many things about the abbey that at first seemed baffling or even ridiculous, a method to the madness did eventually emerge. Chanting the text in a monotone serves several purposes: It relieves the reader of having to study the text beforehand, to understand what words to give emphasis to, and it sounds the same no matter who reads it. As with the drabness of the church, the monotone guarantees that the focus stays on the story, not the storyteller. And never, ever, is there any mumbling.

  Just before the reading began, I caught a couple of the younger brothers playfully making faces at each other across the refectory, one pretending to clean his ears with his napkin. It heartened me greatly to see humor at the abbey, as I’d been a little intimidated by the nervous and severe-looking hotelier. Of course, the fact that I had disobeyed his very first instruction by sitting in the second row in church didn’t help. The sixth-century Benedictine Rule, which still governs daily monastery life today, dictates that all abbeys shall receive guests—in fact, receive them as (gulp) Christ—but it is the hotelier’s job to make sure that they don’t interfere in any way with the monks’ lives of prayer and contemplation. He had a lot of responsibility, and if I screwed up, say, by sitting down at the abbot’s table or interrupting the history lesson with a loud burp, it was his head.

  I didn’t become familiar with the Rule until I’d returned home, but the level of specificity in this document is remarkable. Even the procedure for the mealtime reading is spelled out. “Not just anyone who happens to pick up the book shall read,” the Rule instructs. “The one who should read should begin on Sunday and do so for the whole week.” Such detail was necessary. Saint Benedict, writing a hundred years before the founding of Saint-Wandrille, was trying to restore order and discipline to the monasteries, which even in those early years of Christendom had become loose and corrupt.

  I mostly welcomed the mandatory silence at meals for the freedom it provided from having to make obligatory small talk with strangers (“Do you come here often?”), but at times it became something of a farce. There were six of us at the guest table at lunch this first day (a mixture of day guests and some new overnight guests who’d arrived), and we used sign language—as specified in the Rule—for offering to pour cider and the like. Some mouthed, “Merci.” An occasional whisper (“Say, could I have some more of those terrific fries?”) while the abbot was droning on about radial steel belt tires would’ve gone a long way. As a matter of fact, at one point I wanted more french fries, but other than poking the diner next to me—a gloomy, blond young man wearing rectangular eyeglasses, jeans, and a red nylon jacket tightly zipped to his chin, making him look as if he’d just descended from the French Alps—in the ribs, I had no way to communicate that critical piece of information.

  As the monotone continued, everyone at the table, picking up on some signal that only I had missed, folded his cloth napkin and placed it back in its ring. I followed suit, wondering if this meant I’d see the same napkin at dinner. It did. And the next day. And the day after that. The monks took this frugality one step further, each using his napkin to clean out the inside of his drinking glass and wipe down the table before stowing the napkin, along with his silverware and glass, in a small wooden box, ready for the next meal.

  With such a substantial midday meal, I suspected dinner would consist of lighter fare, but that night’s menu started with a fabulous, thick green vegetable soup, followed by chicken cordon bleu and roast tomatoes (from the abbey garden), and for dessert, french toast — recognizably the dreary baguettes from lunch, transformed into a sweet dessert.

  Practically every monk in the place, though, was trim and fit. The French paradox at work? Not exactly. The secret here is that meals are not a lingering affair. Food is plentiful but is whisked in and out at such a frantic pace that to get a full stomach, you have to eat quickly—two chews and down the hatch—or you’ll leave hungry. During my stay, the typical dinner, a three-course affair consisting of soup, entrée, and dessert, was concluded in a Maalox-inducing nineteen minutes! I hadn’t had to eat that fast since junior high school lunch period.

  Near the end of dinner one night, I followed as the guests again put their napkins back into their rings. The man across from me, however, laid his ring on top of his folded napkin. A moment later, the père hôtelier rose and, looking particularly stern, strode quickly over, picked up the napkin ring (silently, it goes without saying), and walked quickly down to the far end of the hall, where he dropped it into a drawer, while the poor fellow sat with downcast eyes. Had something happened? Was he being thrown out on his ear? Maybe for sitting in the wrong pew?

  No, it was just another ritual, one that I would eventually experience myself (thank goodness I’d be prepared for it). When you arrive, the abbot washes your hands; when you leave, the hotelier returns your napkin ring to the sideboard. That way, everyone knows it is your last supper.

  ——————————————

  After lunch that first day, a short middle-aged monk, a tall young monk, and a medium monk, all wearing glasses, were outside waiting for me.

  “Are you the baker?” the medium monk, who was apparently there to be a translator, asked in fluent English. He introduced me to the tall monk, Bruno, who was to be my apprentice, and to the short monk, Philippe, the abbey’s accountant, who looked every bit the part. Philippe, whose English actually wasn’t bad, had been placed in charge of me for the visit because he’d been the assistant to the last baker and knew his way around the fournil.*

  The four of us went over to take a look at the mothballed bakery, but the monks didn’t have much time. It was already two, and the next service—None (or “ninth”)—was at 2:15. I had expected to be working in a corner of the kitchen, but the abbey had a dedicated fournil opposite the large courtyard, the last in a row of shops, housed in a long fourteenth- to seventeenth-century building, that included the laundry, the woodshop, and the commercial business that supported the abbey, a document-digitization service. I was tickled by the fact that, given its renowned history of copying medieval texts, Saint-Wandrille was still in the document-preservation business, but none of the monks seemed to appreciate the irony. Instead they viewed the business as an annoyance that they’d just as soon unload if they could find a replacement source of income.

  The bakery itself seemed to date from not long after the Middle Ages. The first thing I saw as we entered was an old, belt-driven commercial kneader, which, I was told, was purchased in the 1930s. “We won’t be needing that. We’ll knead bread by hand,” I said breezily.

  Philippe and Bruno exchanged nervous looks. Had I said something wrong? Philippe then introduced me to the enormous oven, which was comparatively new—only a half century old, with a panel of dials and toggle switches bearing mysterious labels like “Petit Chauffage” and “Grand Chauffage.” About ten feet deep and six feet across, it took up most of the bakery, although the baking area inside was less than a foot high. I’d have to watch the rise of my boules in that thing. I peered inside. The top of the interior looked like the business end of a toaster, covered with rippled wires that would glow red when this behemoth was powered up. I was thrilled to see that the oven had a heavy firebrick floor and a steam injector. Philippe opened a manila envelope and pulled out a stack of worn papers, the original instructions for the
oven. If there’s one thing monks excel at, it’s record keeping.

  I looked around. There was a very small workbench and a crude proofing cabinet made from plywood, which held ten shelves of greasy black bread trays, each molded to hold a half-dozen long loaves. We wouldn’t be using those, either.

  I showed Philippe and Bruno the levain I’d brought from home. They weren’t quite sure what it was or how it was going to be used. I explained that we could either use instant dry yeast (which they’d never heard of—Philippe had only used fresh cake yeast in the past) or levain, or a combination of both, to leaven the bread. I pulled out my recipe for pain au levain, which required half a kilo of starter for a good-size miche.

  “But to feed the abbey, we will need so much of it,” Philippe said, peering into my half-gallon container. “Eighteen kilos a day.”

  Eighteen kilos? That was, like, forty pounds.

  “How do you figure?” I asked. “You only need a half kilo for a loaf.”

  “We used to make thirty-six loaves of bread a day.” “Excusez-moi? Combien?” How many? Surely he hadn’t said thirty-six.

  “Thirty-six,” Philippe repeated in English.

  “Thirty-six petite loaves. This makes a big miche.”

  “No, thirty-six one-kilo loaves.” Eighty pounds of bread.

  I gulped. That didn’t make sense. There were only thirty-five monks at the abbey. Even adding in a few guests, I’d figured a good-sized miche feeds six, so we’d make six a day. I explained my math to Philippe.

  “Yes,” the accountant replied, “but we eat bread three times a day, and we bake only three times a week. At breakfast, it is all we eat. And on weekends, we sometimes have twenty or more guests.”

  No wonder they were worried about kneading by hand. That also explained the presence of the enormous industrial oven, purchased when the abbey had not thirty-five monks but sixty. I clearly wasn’t prepared for this kind of volume. Or was I? Suddenly, what I had thought was a wasted week at the Ritz, mixing huge batches of dough, dividing, weighing, and working with a commercial oven, seemed to have served a purpose. Even, one might say, been part of a plan.

  “We’ll just use the levain for special occasions,” I said, trying to appear cool and confident but realizing that, even to do a couple of loaves, I’d quickly have to build up the little bit I’d brought with me. In fact, it was time to feed it right now. “You have some flour?” I asked.

  Philippe pointed to a large sack standing on the floor. “See?” he said. “We got exactly what you asked for.”

  I looked at the label. It was marked “Boulangère Spéciale” and had a long list of ingredients:

  Farine de blé type 55

  Farine de triticale

  Gluten de blé

  Farine de blé malté 80 g/ql

  Amylases fongiques 15 g/ql

  Acide ascorbique 4 g/ql

  In other words, pretty much the type of flour that had ruined French bread, loaded with additives like ascorbic acid, extra gluten, and enzymes to ensure a rapid, tall rise, the flour that Poilâne, Kayser, and Saibron had been campaigning against. The only additive missing was the bane of the postwar baguette, fava bean flour. And the boulangère spéciale was type 55, not the type 65 I had asked for. I bit my lip. Oh, well, at least I wouldn’t have to worry about finding malt (my little bit of malt syrup had since dried up), but how could they have gotten this so wrong?

  Still, I didn’t want to hurt the feelings of my hosts. Philippe was so pleased he had obtained exactly the flour this boulanger américain had requested. But where was the whole wheat, the farine complète? I was willing to try to make bread with this flour, but I didn’t want to make Wonder bread. We needed some whole wheat.

  “Où est la farine complète?” I asked Philippe.

  He seemed confused by my question. There were twenty-five kilos of it right in front of me.

  “No,” I said in French. “This is white flour, not complète.”

  He pointed to the writing near the bottom of the bag: “Boulangère Complet.” The flour was complete, having everything the baker needed, including added malt and gluten. That explained the confusion, but I marveled again how some people in France didn’t know what whole wheat flour was.

  I decided to let it drop for now. Thank goodness they had obtained the bag of rye flour I’d requested. We discussed how to get started, and I suggested that we just bake two loaves tomorrow to acquire some experience with the oven and the flour. Philippe and Bruno had been thinking along the same lines, and we agreed to start at 8:15 a.m., after Lauds.

  Before leaving the fournil, though, I needed to feed the levain. The twenty-five-kilogram bag of flour was sewn shut. I was struggling with it, when the monk who was acting as translator reached under his habit and whipped out a large pocket knife with a locking blade that wouldn’t have been out of place in South Central Los Angeles.

  “What the he . . .”—I caught myself just in time—“heck are you doing with that thing?”

  “All the monks are required to carry them,” he deadpanned. “Except when we sleep, for fear we’ll cut ourselves.”

  I cut open the bag and returned the knife. Clearly I had to revisit some of my notions about monks. As my companions scurried off to None, I settled into the old bakery—for the next few days, my bakery!—blowing the dust off peels, finding some couches for forming the loaves, trying in vain to coax some heat out of the radiator (the place was freezing), and planning out the next day. I realized that if I was making a pain de campagne at eight, I’d have to feed the levain by 5:30 a.m. or so.

  Before I knew it, evening had come and the bells were ringing for Vespers. I entered the church from the door in the courtyard, following two new guests, who, before sitting, knelt and said a silent prayer. For the first time in many, many years, I did the same. This is what I said, this Prayer for Nonbelievers Who Nonetheless Could Use a Little Help:

  Dear God, if you exist and you are the kind of God that these good men at this abbey are sure you are, a God who is aware of each and every one of us and listens to and even sometimes answers our prayers, I don’t often ask anything of you, but I have endured sickness, theft, strikes, scam artists, and wandering a strange city at midnight to get here, only to find a 1930s mixer and the wrong flour. I ask you just one favor: Please, dear God, don’t let me screw up tomorrow. Let the bread be good.

  Day 2: D-Day

  High on the list of Things I Never Thought I’d Hear Myself Say: “If we start the poolish after Vespers, we can refrigerate it overnight, take it out to warm up before Vigils, knead the dough after Lauds, let it ferment during Terce, form the loaves just before Sext, and bake after None.”

  Which would bring us back to Vespers. I triumphantly tapped the point of the pencil down on my notebook. “Bon!” I said out loud, letting out a huge sigh of relief.

  ——————————————

  Our first day of baking had not gone well. The oven thermostat was off by 50 degrees Celsius (a full 90 degrees Fahrenheit), so our test loaves were scorched in the oven. (I should’ve known something was wrong when the parchment paper I’d brought along instantly turned to ash.) The miche I’d made with the boulangère spéciale flour had risen so much, I was afraid it would hit the heating coils on the oven ceiling. Most troubling of all, though, was another, more vexing problem to be solved: fitting the bread making into the busy (and inflexible) schedule of the monks.

  I had come to Normandy with my artisan sensibilities, slow, cool fermentations, five-hour poolishs, and six-hour levain risings—all unwelcome alms to a monk-baker who had to run off to church seven times a day, not to mention his assorted study groups and other commitments (including playing the organ on Sundays). I was amazed by how tied to the clock abbey life was. A monk doesn’t technically need a watch, for the bells still toll, as they have for thirteen centuries, fifteen and five minutes before each service, but every monk I saw wore one. Bruno’s was a sharp-looking digital model.
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  The liturgy of the hours, starting with the predawn Vigils at 5:25 (which lasts up to an hour and ten minutes) and ending with the close of Compline at 9:00 in the evening, with five other Offices and two fixed meal hours in between, left little time for much else. Here is the schedule we were faced with:

  Plus another afternoon gathering for the monks in the chapter house, various study groups, and time devoted to private prayer. Not to mention that all of the brothers also had jobs. They were doing the laundry, cutting the grass, cleaning the kitchen, practicing the organ, being guest masters, doing bookkeeping, managing the gift shop, sweeping the great halls, lighting the church, and being the homeowners of a thousand-year-old house (and being the homeowner of a mere baby of a hundred-year-old house, I have more than an inkling of what that involves). “When is there time for contemplation?” I asked Philippe, who seemed confused by the question.

  “We only work for an hour and a half in the morning, and an hour and a half in the evening,” Philippe answered. “There is time after Mass and in the afternoon, after None.”

  Perhaps, but not nearly enough time to make the somewhat fussy and time-consuming bread I’d brought to Saint-Wandrille. I had thought monks took long, leisurely walks and had hours each day to do nothing but think and pray. These monks, though, always seemed to be rushing around, often late for services, always pressed for time. The rigorous timetable seemed to impose an almost military discipline on the monks, but after all, I guess discipline is the name of the game when one chooses the monastic life.

  ——————————————

  “We have to wait five hours?” Philippe asked with alarm, peering down at my bubbly poolish. “Then another three hours after that? We won’t be baking until Vespers!”

  He had a point. Even the mere baking of the miche had been a problem, since it took nearly an hour — an hour that had to be jammed in between services. In fact, Bruno and Philippe had had to run off to church, although the miche was still in the oven. I needed to come up with something that fit into their schedule, that could be made in quantity (which left out my state fair miche, leavened with only the wild yeast levain), and, most importantly, that Bruno could handle after I left in only two days. I could almost see Philippe and Bruno shaking their heads as they left for None. Tomorrow, Saturday, we were to make our first batch of bread for the abbey. Sunday was a day of rest, and Monday morning I was leaving for the Normandy coast before returning home the following day. In other words, I had one shot at this, and one shot only, to have any chance of repairing the broken tradition of bread making at Saint-Wandrille.