Where do you buy your bread?

Tesco’s are generally OK - IF - you get the “in store baked” ones (in reality finished off from part baked).

I don’t mind the Lidl ones either but my wife does not like them.

After my sour dough conversion, I’m now very much loving bread again, but just wish more of the independent’s sold it. Maybe they find it’s not popular enough, with the majority of folks sticking with the staple baguette :thinking:

Bad news I’m afraid - for years, we bought 14 croissants a week from them, until they changed their recipe a few months ago (less butter and I think it’s now bought in). After apologising, we took our croissant trade to Cruzel et Fils at Bouillac, which you may pass en route to Decaz.

However, for bread, Le chant du pain at Boisse-Penchot (also en route to Decaz) is unbeatable - ancient grains, wild yeasts and an exceptional artisanal baker who is the guru of the Aveyron’s young wannabe master bakers. He doesn’t make croissants or chocolatines - just very serious bread. Unfortunately he’s so popular that he only needs to open on Tuesday and Thursday evenings from 4-7pm and on Saturday mornings! I wouldn’t even dream of trying to surpass Eric’s pain au levain at home, but often make North African style flatbreads in a large cast-iron galette pan.

Also, every Saturday morning we buy a large piece of the enormous (c.80x40 cms) pain à l’ancienne from Pourcel Vincent in Figeac

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Sorry, but no. There are quite strict rules about what you can and can’t do if you call yourself a boulangerie. So you have to process the dough from flour, water, yeast and salt, and form and bake it yourself. You can’t use additives, and can’t freeze anything (so can’t make extra dough and freeze it for example). And they must close one day a week.

Anything that is called “Le Fournil de Marie” or equivalent is not a boulangerie and can buy in ready made dough.

Jane I wrote flour not dough they make the dough themselves. The majority buy the flour from industrial mills. Look it up you’ll be surprised :open_mouth:

Discovering Georgian cuisine was a pleasant surprise (and their wines too) first encountered at a critical animal theory (what ? !) conference dinner in a resto in Eastern Estonia, where a bizarre androgynous Russian couple tried over dinner to entice OH and self into some sort of foursome (he/it was almost translucent and looked like a vampire or an escapee from Cabaret whereas she was simply overweight and predatory). Fortunately, the food was also very memorable and I bought this book as a result.

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It’s easy and cheap to make! You can do it in a frying pan. Though even that small amount of time you probably haven’t got, Tory! Plus if it’s that delicious your boys will just eat more of it.

Big bags of flour are cheap, there are some great local mills around, 1min to load the 4 or so ingredients into 59 euro bread machine that does a large loaf each day or night and set the delay timer. The loaf can be used up each day, or sliced and the slices frozen (or even made up into sandwiches and frozen, put into lunchpacks still frozen and thaw but still cool by lunchtime)

No one needs to eat Harry’s or similar but I do understand the appeal.

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Plenty to chew on there DrMarkH, Thankyou. As and when I find a French dentist I will plan any travel to Figeac/Decaz area accordingly.

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We actually live right next door to the long established (over 100 years in the same family) Boulangerie in our village. The Brioche is excellent, and the Raspberry Sponge slices are just divine. The bread ? Well it seems like it was made 100 years ago having been fabricated as a weapon of war during WW1. I think they must have shares in a dentistry business. We just buy the sliced wholemeal from Lidl and the stone cooked pain pre-cuit from Intermarche.

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Mediaeval Persian texts are always mentioning the Karts, usually as being up to no good and actually referred to as wolves etc but saying all sorts of interesting things about them, and obviously I wondered who these Karts might be and actually they are Georgians. So voilà. I think in Georgian the language is called Kartuli or Kartveli, in Persian you write it with a letter in it which can be a V or a U depending.

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We are lucky enough to have this on the doorstep and their baguettes and chocolatines are the best I have ever eaten anywhere. Incredibly reasonable prices too.

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Just collected some croissants from the local store - makes no claims to be a boulangerie - made with regional flours, still warm from the oven. :blush:

I misread dough for flour! And yes few boulangerie have the ability to produce their own flour, but many will say what meunerie they use so you can check the flour.

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There is a bakery in Deux-Sèvres whose manageress, originally from Hautes-Pyrénées, is selling chocolatines at €1,05 and pains au chocolat at €5!

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We had to buy a new Panasonic as the bread was sticking to the container and buying a new container was not financially worthwhile.
No more huge holes in the bottom of the loaf now.

A bit like the one inside cameras ? :smile:

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My outdoor nighttime camera broke down recently, and it was still under guarantee so I sent it back for repairs. A few days later I got a traumatised phone call from the (small family run) company . When they opened the packet loads of earwigs ran everywhere. Turns out the inside of the camera was an earwig nest…Yuk. Gnomes much better.

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Not much bigger than the earwigs? No wonder they were traumatised.

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Lidl are selling them this week.

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