Free Confessions of a French Baker by Peter Mayle Page B

variations, marks of humanity, that distinguish handmade objects from those turned out by machine.
    The variations are a little easier to spot at the next stage of the loaf's birth, when the decorative touches are added. With the classic
baguette
, for example, you will find a series of diagonal stripes along the top surface of the loaf. At Auzet, these are made by hand. They start as gashes, swift stabs with what I originally thought must be a special tool—the baker's friend—used only by the pros. When I asked to take a look at one, I saw that it was a sliver of tin clipped from a can, sharp and shiny from years of use.
    In a matter of minutes, twenty lumps of dough hadbecome twenty
baguettes.
After each had been given its stripes, it was put on a length of flour-dusted canvas that had been corrugated to separate one loaf from the next. When the batch was completed, it was slid into the oven on a long wooden board.
    By the time the first contingent of
baguettes
came out of the ovens, it was about four-thirty. The loaves were golden, some slightly darker at each end. Baking had caused the gashes to widen and fill in until they looked like indentations that might have been made in the crust by a finger applied horizontally across the loaf.
    Gerard took a
baguette
from the batch and held it to his nose, much as a sommelier might check a cork. Then he turned the
baguette
over and tapped the flat underside two or three times, making a sound like a muffled drumbeat. “That's one way of testing the bread,” he said. “You can hear when it's been baked correctly.”
    He passed me the loaf, and I gave it a novice's tap. Now that warm air had expanded the dough, the
baguette
felt light, almost hollow, rather than dense. I gave it a squeeze: firm, but yielding. I gave it a sniff. Mmmm. It made me wonder what time bakers had breakfast. I hoped it was soon.
    This particular loaf, the standard, slim, everyday
baguette
, is best eaten young. It stays fresh for four or five hours, no more. (“Too good to last,” as Gerard would tell you.) And so it's not unusual for a baker to see many of his morning customers turn up again in the afternoon, when they come by to collect their dinner
baguettes.
Larger loaves stay fresh longer, as do the denser breads like
pain de campagne, pain au son
, and
pain complet.
But the
baguette
remains the most popular loaf, and indeed one of the enduring symbols of France.
    Some years ago, this sacred object came under attack. Certain unscrupulous supermarkets, in an effort to seduce the trusting housewife and undercut local bakers, brought out the one-franc
baguette.
It was an inferior specimen,
bien sur
, a miserable copy, but less than half the price of the real thing.
    The supermarkets should have known better. Nobody trifles with the bakers of France, and war broke out at once.
Aux armes, les boulangers!
Independent bakers, united against a common foe, counterattacked. Delegations were sent to Paris. Ministers were petitioned. Protests were lodged in high places. The honor of French bread, the very fabric of French life, was at stake.
    Finally, a group of bakers (among them RogerAuzet, Gerard's father) came up with a method of identifying bread that had been made in the traditional way with traditional ingredients. It was a kind of trademark, a guarantee of superior quality. Banette was the chosen name, and you will see it today displayed on bags and signs in every
boulangerie
where proper bread is made.
    BY FIVE A.M. , the Auzet bakers were in overdrive, working with extraordinary speed and precision— rolling and shaping the dough, slashing away with their miniature daggers, sliding the batches into the oven, thumping the oven doors shut. By the end of the day, more than a thousand loaves and
petits pains
would be formed, baked, and sold.

    A small selection of the day's work
    It was just after six when Gerard felt we deserved our breakfast. Leaving the bakers to their noble work, we went up the