Bread / Du Pain

Bread is a French staple and there is a huge a variety of shapes, sizes and flavours of loaf.  We favour our local bakery for our B&B.  As well as traditional baguettes and croissants, Yves and Marie-Ange make 2 speciality breads that we like.

• The paysou is a rustic loaf, which I think is made with wholemeal flour.  Historically it would have been ‘peasant’ bread when the less processed flour would have been cheaper.
• The gache reminds me of a Stottie, which is a traditional flat, round bread from the North East of England.  Lots of local bakeries seem to have a loaf they call the gache, but they all seem to be different and we haven’t found a Stottie lookalike anywhere else.

The pain au chocolat and the pain au raisin are delicious and enormous!  They are much better than the supermarket versions.

Occasionally on a Sunday, Henry will treat me to a millefeuille or another delicacy.  This is the day Marie-Ange stocks up with sweet treats.

And at Epiphany, we are treated to a traditional Galette du Roi, which is layers of puff pastry, with creme patisserie inside.  Hidden in the galette is a feve (bean) and the person who gets the bean gets to be king (Roi) for the day.