Chapter 6
Chapter Six
Pierre Moreau
At fifteen years of age, Pierre Moreau began his apprenticeship at Maison Angelina in Paris.
Having grown up on a small farm in rural France, Pierre had always felt that fate had something special in store for him.
Whilst feeding the pigs or tending to the vegetable garden, he would daydream about a life far away, rich with excitement and opportunity.
He had never quite fitted in at home, but when Pierre was old enough to follow his mother’s recipes, something changed.
In the kitchen, he was more sure of himself, and the warm, tasty pies he produced using apples from the orchard or berries from the roadside earned him the goodwill from his siblings that was in all other circumstances non-existent.
Offering food, it seemed, held a kind of magical power to elevate people out of the ordinary and into the realm of contentment, even bliss.
And so it was that Pierre made up his mind to become a baker at the very finest establishment in all of Paris.
Maison Angelina was a place of opulence and style, attracting all of high society to sample its exquisite patisseries.
It was owned by an Austrian confectioner by the name of Anton Rumplemayer, who was awarded the honour of Hofzuckerb?cker, Confectioner to the Court, by the Empress Elisabeth in Vienna.
Why did this matter so much to Pierre? Because Pierre was a perfectionist and nothing would do but to learn from the very best. He worked long hours at the bakery, rising so early in the morning that it hardly felt as though he had gone to bed at all.
He was passionate about baking and the idea that bread could nourish not only the body, but also the soul.
It was at Maison Angelina that he learned to achieve the perfect lamination in the flaky pastry of the croissant.
He also learned of its origin, the Austrian kipferl.
Created in Vienna following the end of the Ottoman siege and shaped to resemble the crescent moon on the Turkish flag, the French renamed it ‘croissant’.
They also improved upon the recipe by using layers of puff pastry and butter.
Rumplemayer told Pierre that it was Marie Antoinette herself who brought the croissant to France, but that story is for another time.
Despite the clattering of pans, the sharp clang of whisks and the intense heat of the ovens, there was a quiet orderliness to the kitchen that Pierre loved.
Each cook was deeply immersed in their own work, only emerging to pass the process on to the next person, in what appeared to Pierre like a dance.
Baking was a meditative process and Pierre felt closer to God in those moments of intense focus than he ever did in a church.
As the years passed, Pierre began to think about his future.
He had a little money put aside, but not nearly enough to open his own elegant patisserie in Paris.
As much as he loved working with Rumplemayer, there was a desire within him to make his own name.
It was on a very ordinary Tuesday, while Pierre was enjoying an afternoon to himself, that he took a stroll to the market in Le Marais.
Among the stalls selling fresh fruit, cheese and the finest cuts of meat, he stumbled across a strange man who claimed to have journeyed from Madagascar, an island off the south-eastern coast of Africa, bringing with him a rare form of vanilla bean.
He told Pierre that native peoples grew their vanilla orchids from the roots of the cacao tree, and this botanic wonder produced a bean with the rich, earthy essence of chocolate and the sweet floral aroma of vanilla.
The man cut open a vanilla pod and scraped out a small number of seeds onto Pierre’s fingertip.
Perhaps he was expecting a slightly nuanced flavour, something the customers might not be able to identify, but the taste almost suspended Pierre in mid-air.
It had an intoxicating perfume that blossomed within him.
Clocks stopped, the market around him fell into silence, and as clearly as he was standing on a street in Paris, all at once he was back in the town of Compiègne, eating a tart filled with fresh fruit and crème patissière, with his friend from school, Jean-Yves.
In all these years he had never realised, until this moment, until the memory came unbidden, that he had been in love with Jean-Yves.
With tears blurring his vision, Pierre turned back to face the strange man, who had a knowing smile on his face.
‘What is this?’ Pierre asked.
‘Your heart’s desire, my friend,’ the man replied, placing his flat palm on his chest.
All of a sudden, Pierre knew exactly what he wanted to do. He would return home and open a bakery so the humble people of Compiègne could taste the elegance of Paris. But more than that, with this special ingredient, he would melt their hearts.
‘I’ll take everything you have.’
* * *
‘I hesitate to tell you, Monsieur Moreau, but in all good conscience I must, this building has something of a … history,’ said the agent, Monsieur Dujardin, who was a nervous type and ensured that no gap in conversation went unfilled for long. Pierre had hardly said one word since they arrived.
‘Every building has a history,’ Pierre said, matter-of-factly, descending the stairs from the apartment above. It was perfect. He could live above the bakery and there was already an oven in the basement. It might need some attending, as it hadn’t been used for many years.
‘Quite right, quite right,’ said Dujardin, relieved that he had dispatched his moral duty without having revealed anything of the building’s more unusual qualities.
It was said that a woman had opened a bakery here.
Well, that alone was cause for alarm. Everyone knew that women and business should never mix.
Far too emotional, and indeed it was this that started all of the trouble.
But Monsieur Dujardin did not trade in tittle-tattle nor did he believe in old wives’ tales.
Especially when it stood between him and his fee.
‘I want to make an offer,’ Pierre said, in his calm, composed manner.
‘Oh, how delightful. What I mean is, naturally, it’s a fine building of character, Monsieur Moreau and dare I say, a very competitive price,’ Dujardin prattled on, alluding to another buyer who was purely a figment of his imagination.
Pierre handed over all of the money he had saved, which was just enough to secure the purchase of the building.
He would need a loan to buy some furniture and most importantly, ingredients, but now that he was a man of standing, he trusted that everything would come good, as it did.
Just as they shook hands on the deal and stepped outside into the street, Pierre saw his old friend Jean-Yves.
The shock made his mouth dry and his legs feel suddenly hollow.
There, by his side, was a beautiful young woman holding a swaddled baby in her arms.
‘Pierre!’ Jean-Yves called and the two men embraced warmly. ‘You have returned to us.’
Pierre could hardly speak, but smiled at his friend, and at his new bride.
‘Tell me, my friend, how was Paris?’
‘As spectacular as you can imagine,’ Pierre finally replied.
‘You must be a great patissier now!’
Pierre looked at the child in the young woman’s arms, who slept soundly. He felt his heart straining to beat, as though all of the blood had drained out of it.
‘I can create many wonderful things,’ he said, ‘but you, my friend, have the best thing of all, a family.’
Jean-Yves invited Pierre to stay with them until the bakery was habitable.
‘You are a part of our family now,’ he kindly assured him.
Pierre wanted to turn down the kind offer, but in truth, he had nowhere else to go.
It was during those few weeks, whilst witnessing the love that this little family shared, that Pierre made a decision.
He told himself that love would not be his destiny, and so he would pour all of his heart into his baking.
When Pierre opened the doors to the Boulangerie et Patisserie on Rue de Paris, he began infusing his dough with his special ingredient.
The unusual flavour transported those who tasted it to a place beyond imagination.
This would be his gift to the people of Compiègne, who now became his family.
Even Pierre himself could not explain it, but this mixture of decadence and sweetness could, with the right balance, cause the heart to blossom.