by Bill Buford
“Oh.”
“You are wasting your time.”
“No chance?”
“None,” he said.
I took a sip of the juice. I was surprised. It was the liquid expression of a perfect pear. I finished the glass.
“It is from our trees,” Jacquet said.
“I thought so!”
I scooped up butter on the tip of my knife and tasted it. It was fatty and beautifully bovine. The bread was curious. It had been sliced from a rectangular loaf and, to my prejudiced eye, looked store-bought and industrial. I had a bite. It wasn’t store-bought. Wow, I thought. This is good bread.
“Americans don’t like sliced bread,” Jacquet said. There had been complaints on Yelp. “They think I haven’t actually made it if it’s sliced. They think it’s not fresh if it wasn’t baked on the day. Some breads are good for a day. Some last longer. This bread is good for a week.”
“Americans can be so ignorant,” I said, while thinking: What? Week-old bread? I didn’t come all this way to eat week-old bread.
I tasted some of the jam. Intense, fruity, not too sweet.
“I hate the Lyonnais,” Jacquet said.
“I understand,” I said.
“I hate Lyon.”
“Perfectly reasonable,” I said.
I finished my bread. “I was wondering if I might have another slice?”
* * *
—
After breakfast, and before I set out to waste more time, I phoned Olivier Parpillon. I had been calling him every day for a while. He hadn’t picked up. I had left a message every time. He didn’t pick up today, and I left another message. So I thought I would venture out and hope to find him and his boat.
Parpillon’s operation was at the end of an affluent cul-de-sac, on the lake’s west side. He wasn’t there, which seemed completely appropriate, and I introduced myself to the members of his team. They were the fisherman equivalent of butchers, three men, two women, in white rain-gear overalls, talking among themselves in a local patois, less Italian or French than some mountain Savoyard-speak, cleaning the day’s catch (scale, poke, slice, gut), a haul of lavaret, found here and nowhere else: fifteen inches long, with a white subtle flesh, cited in texts as early as the fifteenth century and with a delicacy favored by the voracious Rabelais.
“No féra?” I asked. I was making conversation. Féra was a fish that I had become particularly fond of. It, too, you can’t find in any other part of the world. I had eaten it at the hotel in Artemare, on my Brillat-Savarin walk.
Féra, they told me, is not found in this lake. It is in Lac Léman (Lake Geneva is called Lac Léman in France), and they didn’t like it. “Féra eats other fish, grows fast, and is bigger than lavaret, with a different taste.” Goût. “Stronger, meatier.”
“Lavaret is here, and I prefer it,” a member of the team said. “Lavaret don’t eat other fish. They live on the health of the lake. The goût is very delicate.”
I nodded, although I feel compelled to observe that these Lake People, with their patois and their highly local prejudices, were obviously culinary chauvinists whose palates had been ruined by an excessive diet of delicate (i.e., less flavorful) ecofish, and that, even though I wanted to be their friend and have them take me out onto the lake with them, their views about the flavor of féra were boneheaded and wrong, and, furthermore, even though it comes from a lake often seen as Swiss (i.e., Lac de Genève), and is therefore possibly outside the scope of this book, the fish has a goût or whatever you want to call it, a good-tasting-ness, that probably comes from all the other creatures it gobbles up, and is outstanding and unlike that of any other freshwater fish I can recall, and if you ever have a chance to eat it, do not hesitate: Pounce. But this was just my opinion.
I carried on watching.
They did a fish in ten seconds. They did it without thinking. They did it without looking at their hands. While I stood there, they did five hundred lavarets. The atmosphere seemed like the seaside—a lake as big as an ocean, the white rain gear, the volume of the haul—but the fish were not for long keeping. You smell their fragility. (Sea fish seem to keep, lake fish don’t, because sea fish are preserved in their salinity; lake fish are best eaten at the lake.)
Parpillon appeared and got out of his vehicle, warily. What was I doing, fraternizing among his people?
I did my shtick, how the rest of the world will never be able to eat the fish that one finds here, and how I wanted to describe it, and that he was my last stop. I would be flying to New York in two days.
“What do you want?” he asked.
Parpillon was a robust thirty-something, with dark hair, seal-like fit, more swimmer than rugby player, a goatee, closely cropped hair, and had a no-nonsense manner.
“I want to go out with you in your boat,” I said.
“I can’t take you.” He was matter-of-fact. “Look at the size of our haul. I need three others working with me. There isn’t the room. We’ll capsize.”
I did as he instructed, and took in the size of his catch. “Of course,” I said.
I asked if I could watch, and I was tolerated. At lunchtime, everyone went home to their families, and I got a crêpe in town. I returned in the afternoon, and continued watching.
Parpillon appeared later and seemed, I’m not sure why, a little friendlier.
“I’ve been thinking about your idea,” he said. “Maybe we could do a smaller fish, like perch. Why don’t you come back tomorrow evening? We’ll go out together.”
* * *
—
I woke early at La Source and went downstairs. Éric Jacquet was waiting for me, no one else in the breakfast room, no one else in the kitchen, no one else in the hotel, arms crossed, leaning against the doorframe, having put out his usual offering.
I thanked him and sat down, my place set so that I would, as before, sit directly in front of him.
“What now?” Jacquet asked.
“Today?”
He nodded his invisible (Did I actually see it?) nod.
I wanted to tell him about my visit with the fishermen, but I was hungry, and the display of local urgencies was particularly appealing, especially the jam, which today was quince and pear and apple, all the orchard flavors of the season in one jar. I spread it, with Jacquet’s home-churned butter, on a piece of bread, took a bite, and then found myself studying the color of my slice: light but not white, but more white than brown, and it didn’t seem like whole wheat or whole grain. Even so, it was perfectly satisfying, and lean on the palate, and was also fruity. I ate my egg but hadn’t needed to. The bread was a meal in itself.
I thought: When was the last time that I described bread as a meal in itself? I have had this bread before.
“Where does your flour come from?” I asked Jacquet, who had assumed his position, arms folded, leaning against the doorframe. I half-expected him to say, “The Auvergne.” I wanted him to say it, an eccentric confirmation: “Actually, my wheat comes from the Auvergne, just like your friend Bob’s.”
But Jacquet didn’t understand the question. It is possible that I was the first American ever to ask it. It is possible that I was the first person ever to ask it. I repeated the question.
“Nearby.”
“Where exactly?”
“Le Bourget-du-Lac.”
I knew the town. It was on the other side of the lake, not far from the motorway to Geneva.
“The wheat is actually milled here?”
“Of course. Everything on your plate is from here.”
He told me the name of the miller, Philippe Degrange. I wrote it down. It didn’t seem right. “Grange” is the place where you store your grains. Degrange? Really?
“And the wheat?” I pressed. “What is it?”
“Sixty-five grams.”
He was referring
to the protein content. “No, I didn’t mean the flour. Where does the wheat itself come from? Before it’s milled?” Le blé.
He looked at me suspiciously. What was I asking? “It’s local,” he said.
“Really?”
I hadn’t meant to sound skeptical. I was just trying to remember if I had ever seen a wheat field nearby.
“The wheat is grown here.” Ici! “The wheat is milled here. The flour is from here. It is local. Everything is local. Everything is from here.” Ici! “It is Savoyard.”
My breakfast done, I got up, and then remembered that, in the bread excitement, I had forgotten to share my news.
“Oh, and Parpillon agreed to take me out.”
“I know,” Jacquet said.
“You do?” I stared at Jacquet, and was sure that I saw the edge of his upper lip shudder slightly. It was almost the beginning of the intention to smile. “You called him, didn’t you?”
The almost imperceptible nod.
“Thank you.”
“I told him to take you out.”
These Savoyards: They’re a little tricky.
* * *
—
I had to pick something up at the pharmacy. I remembered one on the other side of the lake. I completed my errand and stopped at a café on the square.
Jacquet said that the miller was here, in Le Bourget-du-Lac. Were modern grain mills now so compact and computerized that they could coexist with affluent neighbors? Le Bourget-du-Lac has modern homes, pretty squares, mowed lawns, and a bike path. It is leafy.
I thought: Degrange? Really? It would be akin to a milkman’s having the first name Dairy. If Degrange was here, I should be able to google him. And there he was. Minoterie Degrange. What was minoterie? I looked it up. A “flour mill.” A flour mill right here on the very road where I was having my coffee? It appeared to be within walking distance.
I set off.
Recently milled flour was one of the reasons that Bob’s bread was different. The paysan farmer’s thinking (and almost all of Bob’s thinking was a paysan farmer’s) was to mill as needed. You could taste the freshness of the flour.
* * *
—
After half an hour of walking, my doubts returned. The addresses were erratic, and the street—flower beds, trimmed hedges, garages for parking the family car—was as suburban as ever. Was there really an operation here, milling only local grains? But then, just when I decided to turn back, voilà! In the dark shade of tall trees, half obscured by thick foliage, was a small letter-slot mailbox, no street number, but a name, Minoterie Degrange, and a limited company called Le Moulin du Prieuré. The Mill of the Priory. I paused, taking in the name.
The trees and a high metal gate, which was covered with graffiti, hid whatever was behind. Next to the mail slot was a speaker box. I pressed a button.
“Oui?” the speaker box said, a woman’s voice.
“Bonjour,” I told the speaker box. “I have eaten a bread made from your flour, and I would like to meet the owner, Monsieur Degrange?”
Nothing.
“But it’s lunchtime,” the speaker box said finally.
“Of course. I’m sorry. I’ll wait.”
Another protracted silence. Then the gate opened and revealed an industrial yard, completely out of keeping with its neighbors. There were several cab-pulled diesel trucks, two with container tanks, and one with a high-sided trailer, which had been hydraulically raised to empty its contents onto a loading dock. The image was like finding an automobile factory in your closet. It was startling. There was an assortment of buildings, including the mill, which, even though three or four stories high, would have been out of view from the street because of the trees in front. A man emerged from behind a screen door, bald and round and robust, with a factory foreman’s forthrightness, emanating a What-do-you-want? authority, wiping his mouth with a napkin. He looked at me hard. The look said, “You are interrupting the supreme moment of my day.”
“Monsieur Degrange?” I confirmed. “Please excuse me. I ate a slice of bread that was made, I believe, with your flour, and it reminds me of the bread that my friend Bob used to make.”
He pointed to a vehicle. “Get into the car.”
I got in.
“It’s all about the flour,” he said. “I’ll take you to Boulangerie Vincent. You’ve heard of it, yes?”
“No,” I said.
“That’s not possible. Have you been here before?”
“Yes.”
“And you don’t know about Boulangerie Vincent? People come from Paris just to eat at Boulangerie Vincent.”
It was a few miles down the road I had been walking, just before the on-ramp to the motorway to Geneva. The boulangerie was more than a boulangerie. It was also a bar and a pub and a restaurant with tablecloths.
The door opened directly onto the four, the boulangerie’s oven, and a cooling rack built against a wall. The top two rows were for boules (“balls,” the ancient way of bread baking), 1.5 kilos, resting on their sides, about thirty of them. On the bottom were couronnes, 2.5 kilos, massive, each fashioned into a ring like a crown. A woman, carefully dressed, affluent in manner, was negotiating with the bread guy.
“Mais, Pierre, s’il vous plaît. Just one boule, please. I have guests tonight.”
“I am very sorry, madame, but every loaf has a name attached to it. You know that. If you haven’t reserved, I can’t give you one.”
“Please!” She made as if she was about to kneel on the floor.
Degrange whispered, “The bread is what people come for.”
Pierre looked at his order book. “Someone canceled. I have one couronne.”
“But, Pierre, I can’t serve a couronne. It’s too big!” Trop gros! But she accepted the couronne, and left looking both frustrated and lucky. Pierre returned with his paddle to the oven, brightly radiating the red and black of embers burning. A price list was posted on a brick wall; everything was 3.20 euros a kilo. There was an apology written out at the bottom, that the boulanger never knows how big or heavy his bread will be, and that there will be variations in prices.
“He does two ferments,” Degrange said, “and starts at seven in the evening. The bread needs ten hours. Or twelve. Sometimes fourteen.”
Inside, the café bar was like an English pub, the “saloon,” and mainly men—repairmen, electricians, cable people, metalworkers, painters, mecs. The room roared with conviviality. It also had the accidental arrogance of a place that knew that it was always busy, and you had to push forward to get yourself noticed—even Degrange, who was obviously well known. (Everyone, I got the sense, was a regular, and so no one, therefore, was special.) Degrange ordered us diots and a glass of wine, a local Mondeuse. A diot is a Savoyard sausage. Through the door to a small kitchen, I saw hundreds of diots, drying in the air, end to end, looped by a string. They are made with pork, fat, and salt, and are no different from sausages I once made at a butcher shop in Italy (except for the garlic—since at least Shakespeare’s time, the French have been known as “garlic eaters,” but no one eats garlic like Italians). The diots were cooked in a large, deep sauté pan with onions, red wine, and two bay leaves, and served folded into a bread roll made with Degrange’s flour.
This was what I had tasted at breakfast. I asked for another roll and broke open the croûte and stuck my nose into la mie, the crumb, Frederick’s routine. It smelled of yeast and oven-caramelized aromas, and something else, that fruitiness that I had once thought was unique to Bob’s bread. Here it was. I had identified it this morning, without putting a name to it. I closed my eyes. Bob.
“You recognize it,” Degrange said. “It comes from wheat that is a living plant and not an industrial starch.”
“Where do you get it?”
“Small farms. Nothing more than forty hectares.”
&n
bsp; I must have made a face. Degrange took it for skepticism.
“Ridiculous, no? There are only a few of us.” His son was in Israel, he said, and had just phoned, having tasted a bread like the kind he had grown up eating. “I told him to find out where the wheat came from. But he’d already asked. ‘Very small farms,’ he said.”
Forty hectares. A hundred acres. I recalled my drive through the French breadbasket, the “Panier de France,” where the “farms” were measured in thousand-hectare units.
“Where are the farms?”
“Here in Savoie. And the Rhône Valley. They grow an old wheat, a quality wheat. And the Auvergne. I love the wheat from the Auvergne. Everyone does. The volcanic soil, the iron-rich dirt. You can taste it in the bread.”
We drank another glass of Mondeuse, and Degrange proposed that we go back. “I want to show you the factory.”
On the way out, I stopped to order a boule for the morning, when I would be flying back via Geneva. I contemplated the prospect of arriving in New York bearing a boule for my children that had been made here, near Le Lac-du-Bourget, earlier that very day.
* * *
—
A Degrange has been milling flour here, or on a site closer to the river, since 1704, an operation that, until modern times, had once been powered by water and wind. For more than three centuries, it was the veritable mill of the priory. On a wall was a grainy black-and-white photo of Degrange’s father and grandfather, seated before an enormous mill-paddle wheel, three times their height. There are no mill paddles today. The process now is inaccessible to the novice—whirringly hidden in pipes and generators and computer screens—except for the source material, freshly picked wheat that was being tipped out from the hydraulically raised trailer. I followed Degrange up steep ladderlike stairs to a third floor, where he opened the cap of a pipe and retrieved a cupful of a bright-golden grain.
“Taste.”
It seemed to dissolve in my mouth, creamy and sweet and long in flavor. “What is it?”