A New Bakery

[Isa]

This afternoon I had the perfect croissant. There was a little sweetness to the dough. The outer layer was crisp and flaky. The inside was moist and golden. It tasted just like the croissants in France.

There's a new bakery in town. They bake through the day so at 4:30 when you go in, something is in the oven, the smell in intoxicating. Croissants were just coming out of the oven. I was so looking forward to having you. There was three people before me, by the time they left there was no more croissant. 48 croissants disappeared like that.

There was only a few baguettes left, and five or six pastries, all alone in a huge display case. They were still warm, you could feel it through the bag. Croissants au chocolat were coming out of the huge ovens. Those guys don't bake in the basement, but in the front. You can watch them work. Best of all you can smell their products. They import all of their ingredients from France. You can see the huge bag of French flour in the kitchen.


If I'm brave enough, I could get up at 7:30am and get another croissant fresh out of the oven, still warm. If I’m early enough I might be lucky and see all the different kind of bread they make. If I get there early enough…

[Kimmie]

The flavours and scents of southern France infuse breads and pastries made at this wonderful new bakery. As you enter, you can see and smell the baking, because the shop's ovens are front and centre.

I had the pleasure of discovering this wonderful place this afternoon and I wish I had gone early this morning. I was lucky enough to taste one of their intoxicating chocolate croissants.

Before I came on Cheftalk and read your post, Isa, I was thinking how I would like to be there at 4:00 a.m. just to watch the baker at work. Yup! He bakes while the city sleeps.

It's quite a challenge though. This baker will know he's succeeded when there are lineups out on the street at 6 a.m. and his first customer of the day is still wearing a housecoat and slippers...

[Anneke]

..um...

NAME AND LOCATION PLEASE!!???!!!!!

[momoreg]

I hope it's part of our itinerary in Montreal.

[shroomgirl]

Sounds like my kinda place!!! So who's in their housecoat and slippers?

[cape chef]

great bakerys are few and far between,
I'm glad that you have one in your home town.

perhapes you could ask the baker if you could trail him one evening because you want to write a review on cheftalk
cc

[shroomgirl]

That would be such a cool field trip for us to go on....I bet they would give us a tour and talk about their biz.....what do you think?

[Kimmie]

Anneke,

It's located at 5791 Sherbrooke St. West, near Melrose Ave., N.D.G. The name is "Boulangerie Pâtisserie Banette".

Momoreg,

If they are still alive by June, yes, it will certainly be part of our itinerary. We have several great bakeries here, this is a big city. But this one is probably the most unusual.

Shroom,

Maybe you will start the trend...I'll follow!
They seem to be very forthcoming and willing to sell us French flour. I think they would gladly give us a tour.

[Kimmie]

Pending my own review, here's a nice (and professional) one from the Montreal Gazette. That's how I became aware of this new bakery.

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EARLY TO RISE EACH MORNING, FRENCH BAKER GETS A FRESH START -- It will be hours before Sherbrooke St. W. comes alive for the day. In the pre-dawn darkness of a chilly November morning, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce (NDG) is sound asleep.

Except, of course, for Thierry Pons. He is wide-awake, right in the bustle of the busiest part of his day. He pinches the ends of the long, pointy loaves of french bread, called banettes, that he's about to slide into the stainless steel ovens at Boulangerie Pâtisserie Banette, the French bakery he and his wife opened three weeks ago on the corner of Sherbrooke St. and Melrose Avenue. It's the first North American bakery within the popular European cooperative chain Banette.

After a quarter-century of baking and selling bread, brioches and croissants in Montpellier, in southwestern France -- where four generations of Pons men have earned their livelihood as bakers --Pons has come to Montreal in search of a new challenge.

He's up at 4 o'clock every morning, driving to work from the cottage in western N.D.G. he and his wife purchased after moving here in mid-August.

Two devoted pastry chefs who worked for him in Montpellier have come along to Montreal for the adventure too. For now, the four are living under one roof, trying to learn a little English and scurrying to buy warmer winter clothes as the temperature dips.

Back in Montpellier, Pons said, he had to be up at 2 a.m. to be ready for the 6 a.m. rush at his two bakeries. Some of the customers were still in housecoats and slippers as they jostled for warm croissants and fresh bread for breakfast.

But here, in N.D.G., it will be 8 a.m. before the first clients begin to straggle in. "What do people eat here for breakfast?" Pons wondered as he slid trays of bread, croissants and brioches onto a rolling rack.

There are plenty of French bakeries in Montreal. What makes Banette special, Pons said, are the flavours and scents of southern France that infuse his baked goods -- like the flat, round brioches called Languedociennes, delicately scented with orange-blossom water and drizzled with crème fraîche before baking. Or the sweet, moist Lozérienne, from Lozère, a cake of tightly rolled brioches studded with raisins and candied fruit and drizzled with crème pâtissière.

Dropping chez Banette for anchovy torsades -- long pastry rolls stuffed with anchovy fillets -- is a little like being transported to Provence. The lunch counter is spare. True to the spirit of traditional French bakeries, there is little decor. The ovens are front and centre, though, so customers can see and smell the baking. Pons's traditional provençal sandwiches are dashed with garlic and sprinkled with olive oil.

For dessert, there are the flaky sacristains -- long, rolled puff-pastry confections filled with almond paste and sprinkled with icing sugar -- that Pons's grandmother used to bake for him when he was a boy.

So far, business has been slow but steady. Pons is eager for the day when sales are brisk enough that bread can be baked fresh every hour, as is done in the majority of the 2,800 independent bakeries, most of them in the south of France, that have grouped under the Banette banner in a bid to compete with the big-box stores and supermarkets encroaching across Europe.

"There were 43,000 traditional artisanal bakers in France 25 years ago, but only 30,000 today, and they are dwindling as people move from small towns into big cities, abandoning old traditions in the rush for quick and convenient food," Pons lamented. "People like me, in our little bakeries, try to preserve a certain way of life. But it is not easy."

When we first visited Montreal three years ago, Pons said, he flinched at the hard, chewy loaves sold at supermarkets and dépanneurs that were being passed off as French Bread -- and he thought he might find a niche for himself here.

This bakery is pretty far from home but I will definitely go there, once a week. It's worth the trip...

[Isa]

Of course you will all have to go there at least once. I have a feeling you will all want to go back every day. It's that good. Not sure if they speak english, they just arrived here a few months ago. If they don't we can translate. And we'll call ahead so we can be sure there is fresh still hot croissants for us.



Kimmie if I had the energy, I would propose myself as an apprentice. I would love to spend a few night with those guys baking.....

[Kimmie]

That would be so cool Isa!