Professions of Taste, Les Compagnon du Devoir
Close your eyes, and tear off a piece of your baguette.
Taste it.
Does it call to mind cream or butter?
The fields of wheat where it began?
The oven fire where it was born?
Can you conjure up an image of the baker who shaped it?
In France, Les Compagnon du Devoir is the ancient guild that still trains many of France’s most respected craftspeople. This encompasses such varied fields as building tradespeople such as stone masons, soft material trades such as leathersmiths -- and of course the specialties involving taste, such as cheese, wine, charcuterie, pastry, and bread, the one taste that my novel, Tales of the Mistress - dives into.
In Tales, Bread Apprentice, Epi, faces different challenges in 1560 France, but even today, becoming a Master Baker in France – a Maître Boulanger – takes a total of about seven years. They participate in what is known as the Tour de France. There is no Lance Armstrong or bicycles involved in this Tour, it is a seven year program where the young apprentices travel to various boulangeries and spend time working, sweating, and crafting the various specialty breads of the department.
Les Compagnon thrives even today due to the careful nourishing of the rigorous program by the Master Boulangers around France and now, London. This is very much like the care and feeding required to maintain a levain, the sourdough bread starter, where a smaller system must be in place for the care and feeding of the larger whole.
So, what is it like to be what used to be called a talmelier, but now is called an apprenti, a bread apprentice? Men are not the only ones who train to be boulangers!
Would you like to be a Maître Boulanger?
Do you love the idea of the heavy intense work?
Lifting the flour, kneading the dough, the aromas?
Being in a community of bakers, living and baking together in a Maison of the Guild. A sort of "all for one, and one for all" takes a certain type of person, and commitment.
The youngest woman to ever run a maison du compagnon du devoir.
Eons ago, when I first began research for my novel, Tales of the Mistress, I reached out to Maître Boulanger, Lionel Vatinet, owner of La Farm Bakery in Cary, North Carolina. He and his wife, Missy, were very open and willing to share Lionel’s experiences in the Guild. Missy shared what it was like to listen to the story. It was right around that time, 2006 or so, that Missy shared that while there is still some resistance to women entering the Compagnon brotherhood, it was changing.
In the 16th Century, the setting for Tales of the Mistress and young talmelier, Epi, it was impossible and forbidden for a woman to pursue this trade. But in 2006, the first woman was accepted into the stonemason apprenti program. And since then there have been more women accepted, even into the maitre boulanger program.
In Nimes in the Maitre Boulanger program.
Then came the day when, through Lionel, I was able to offer a glance behind the boulanger's table at Eric Kayser’s in Paris to our culinarily curious teen students in our 2008 Taste the Adventure program. Check out our current Taste the Adventure Program in France, Kauai, and North Carolina, and soon, new adventures!
I am still enamored of the life of a bread-baker. The hours when bakers work are when much of the world is dreaming. I love that! I sense a parallel connection between the world of bakers and writers.
At least in my book!
Do you know the artisanal bakers near you?
What a simple pleasure it is to support these skilled artisans.
To eat bread!
Good crusty bread!
Even in France there is a danger of more and more baguettes being produced in factories. Oui, c’est horrible! At the moment only 60% of baguettes sold in France are made by artisanal bakers. Isn’t it hard to imagine that the quintessential icon of France, a French baguette, could be in danger? Read about baguettes and Unesco’s proclamation.
So please tell me. Do you have strong emotions about bread?
Have you ever wanted to be a baker? Drop me a note if you want to test the Bread of Dreams recipes from Tales of the Mistress!
