52 Loaves (30 page)

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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 Chauff age” and “Grand Chauff age.” 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
le-vain.
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 oft en 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.

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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, fift een and five minutes before each service, but every monk I saw wore one. Bruno’s was a sharp-looking digital model.

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, oft en 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.

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“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.