Chapter 19
T he following morning, I follow the YouTube video to the letter, just as before.
Making sure I do everything correctly and miss nothing.
The weather outside is a near-perfect summer’s day.
No breeze, just warm sunshine. I turn on the oven and weigh out the ingredients for the dough.
I need seven kilos of dough for twenty baguettes.
I halve the amount of flour I need for the mix.
I pour the flour and water into the kneading machine and set the timer on my watch, then check the instructions, adding the yeast and the salt.
The dough is starting to come together and I can smell the warm, soft mixture filling the early-morning air – and as it does, my spirits lift.
When the timer sounds, I switch off the kneading machine and add the dough to the cutting machine.
It delivers sausage shapes, all the same weight, out of the chute.
I stretch each piece of dough, then put them into rows, ready for proving.
This next fermentation takes two hours. I make another batch, just to be sure I’m doing it right, whilst I’m waiting.
I wait and I wait … until finally, my first batch are plumped up and ready for baking.
I cut straight diagonal lines down each one so that the air can escape and, using the wooden palette knife, I put each piece of dough onto the baking tray.
Then I spray each with water and slide them into the oven.
While I’m at it, I make a batch of shortbread just to keep my hands busy.
I step out into the morning light to see Laurent outside the tabac .
‘ Bonjour, Juliet ,’ he calls across the square, and waves politely, before unlocking the door.
‘ Bonjour, Laurent .’ I raise a hand, then turn back inside, anxious not to be away from my bread for too long.
After exactly fourteen minutes, I pull it out.
I stare at the loaves on the work surface.
They look like baguettes. Golden and crisp on the outside.
I pick one up. It smells like a baguette.
I break it in two. It cracks. Steam spirals upwards from the soft inside.
And suddenly a wide smile breaks out on my face. I’ve done it. I’ve made French bread!
I breathe in deeply, tear off a piece, and the white, fluffy crumb pulls away like cotton wool. I smell it again, before popping the warm bread into my mouth. First the crunch from the shiny crust, then my teeth sinking into the soft white inside. I’m euphoric.
I gather up the loaves in my arms, put them into a basket, alongside my tin of shortbread, and head out of the bakery door.
I look nervously at the tabac . I’ll pop across later to see Laurent, but I have to know first of all how I’ve done.
And I know just the people who will tell me.
I jump into the car and head to the mill, where the cars are parked along the driveway. The fisherwomen are there.
‘Geneviève!’ I call, and wave. She raises a hand and smiles. I hurry around the side of the lake towards the flat rock where the women are fishing in the morning sun.
‘I’ve done it! I’ve made bread!’ I tell them, indicating the five loaves I’m carrying. ‘Here, for your lunch! To go with your fish!’ I beam.
Geneviève takes them in her arms. ‘ Bonjour, Juliet .’ Then she kisses my cheeks gently. ‘You were at the boulangerie early again this morning. I miss our morning coffees!’ She laughs.
‘Oh, yes, sorry, bonjour .’ I kiss her cheeks and feel the baguettes’ warmth between us. ‘I picked the best ones, but I think I still need to work on them all looking the same.’
‘Well done!’ she says. And hearing her say that, I could burst with pride.
‘Bravo!’ say the other women, and give a little clap. ‘Bravo!’ Although I’ve only just met them, their support means everything. I hope they know that.
‘Let me know what you think! I have another to deliver to see if I can spread the word.’ I beam even wider, if that was possible, and turn to leave.
‘ Bonne chance ,’ Geneviève says, and the other women join in and wave as I pick my way along the edge of the lake, down the slope and back to my car.
I drive back to the village square and park.
I look at the boulangerie and there, in the window above, Madame Bertou is staring at me, dog under her arm, drawing long and hard on her cigarette.
It has to be worth a try. I go into my shop, grab another baguette, then hurry up the stairs to the front door of the flat above.
‘Madame Bertou,’ I say, as she opens the door. ‘ Bonjour .’
‘Madame.’ She nods with downturned mouth and a cigarette between her fingernails. She’s wearing a silk scarf around her neck, as always, a blue-and-cream-striped top, smart, dark blue jeans and Gucci-style slip-on shoes with the gold horse-bit across the top.
I hold out the loaf, like a runner handing the baton to the next in a relay.
She looks down at it but doesn’t take it.
She draws on her cigarette. ‘What is this? I thought you would have given up this ridiculous notion of trying to make bread after the burning. Oh, mon dieu , it was disgusting. Why are you still persisting?’
‘I have to,’ I say, still holding out the baguette.
She waves her cigarette at it. ‘We have bread here already from a French baker. From the machine. And it’s a lot quieter!’
‘I’m not trying to be a French baker …’ I say, feeling as if a weight has been lifted off my shoulders. I’m not trying to be anyone else: I’m just me, Juliet, falling in love with this new adventure. A journey I couldn’t have imagined being on a few months ago. Just being me.
She looks down at the baguette again. ‘The shine is good,’ she says, the corners of her mouth still turned down. ‘It smells … not bad.’ And finally: ‘I will try it. As long as it isn’t going to poison me like your last bread did, with its terrible burning.’
I could try to argue that it wasn’t my bread’s fault but the oven’s, but decide not to.
She takes the baguette.
‘ Merci ,’ I say.
‘ Bon après-midi ,’ she says and looks at me.
‘ Bon après-midi .’
I nod to her, but she doesn’t acknowledge me so I go down the stairs and walk towards the tabac .
‘ Du pain! ’ I announce, as I walk through the glass door into the tabac , holding two loaves to my chest.
Laurent looks up from behind the bar where he is drying glasses again. ‘ Bonjour ,’ he says.
‘I did it! I made bread! Bonjour! ’
He looks at me in surprise, his hair dark and shiny in the sunlight, beard neatly trimmed above his jawline. He nods slowly. ‘We already said good morning, Juliet. Remember? Or am I so forgettable?’ He smiles. ‘Some people in France would take offence. You’re lucky I’m not some people!’
‘What? Oh, sorry!’ I wave a hand. ‘Anyway, I did it! I made bread!’ I am unable to keep the grin from my face. ‘Here!’
I place the two baguettes on the counter.
Laurent puts down his tea-towel and bends over to study them. He lifts one and smells it.
‘Let me know what you think,’ I say, practically giddy with excitement, putting a tin of the shortbread I made on the counter.
I’m watching him carefully and, I have no idea why, my stomach does a nervous flip as he looks at me with an interested and amused smile.
‘I’m going to be opening the shop next week, now that I’m making bread. ’
He frowns. ‘Next week? It can take years to become a professional boulanger .’
‘Well, it seems I’ve got the hang of it, so with any luck I’ll be up and running sooner than that,’ I say, with a confidence I can’t quite feel – but time isn’t on my side.
He looks at the baguettes, as do the three older men standing and leaning against the bar. He turns down the corners of his mouth. ‘It looks like bread.’
‘Try it,’ I say, ridiculously eager.
He pulls off the end, bites and chews. I hold my breath. Then he passes it to the next man at the bar. ‘Gilles,’ he says. Gilles tears off a bit, bites and chews, then turns down the corners of his mouth and passes the baguette to the two men next to him.
‘ Du sel ,’ says Gilles, shaking his head. ‘Needs more salt. The salt has killed off the yeast. You add the salt before the yeast.’ I concentrate hard on what Gilles is saying.
‘Too soft,’ says the next. ‘Needs longer cooking time.’
‘More steam,’ says the other, with a flourish of his hand.
And I look between them, all pulling the corners of their mouths down, shaking their heads one after the other and putting the bread back on the counter.
‘I like it white. But not soft,’ I manage to translate.
‘My wife prefers it darker, crunchier.’
Suddenly I realise there is a woman at the end of the bar, with bright red lipstick.
She doesn’t speak, but seems to be hanging on Laurent’s every word as he tries the bread again and agrees with practically all the comments made, putting the half-eaten piece back on the counter and dusting off his hands.
He shakes his head. It takes me a moment to recognise the woman, clearly enjoying every moment. It’s the receptionist from the mairie .
‘It needs work, lots more work,’ says Laurent.
‘But it’s bread!’ I say.
‘But it’s not a traditional baguette.’ Gilles and the others agree. ‘It’s an imitation. An interloper.’ And they laugh.
‘ C’est dégueulasse .’
‘ Oui . How you say?’ Gilles says.
‘Disgusting,’ says another.
My bubble has burst. I’m crushed. I hurry out of the bar.
And just as I do, I see the white van pulling up at the vending machine and a small queue of older women gathering beside it, waiting for their lunchtime loaves.
Claude steps out: short legs, shorter than I remember, with a round belly over his belt.
Why on earth did I find him so attractive in that moment of madness?
‘ Bonjour, Juliet! ’ He waves in some kind of polite pretence and rage fires up inside me. I’m furious.
He opens the doors at the back of the van and starts to fill the machine. I look at his bread, all the same size and colour.
‘Let’s meet again soon,’ he calls, and I blush as the women look at me.
I hurry back to the mill as fast as I can and make my way round the side of the building to see the women on the rock, laughing and joking.
For a moment their joy fills me, and makes me feel better.
It was a mistake. Now I need to move on, I tell myself.
Not run away. Just move on. I step towards the edge of the lake and the women, who haven’t seen me.
I’m curious to know what’s making them laugh so much.
And then I see it: they are tossing what looks to be bits of baguette into the lake. My baguette.
They’re using my bread as bait!
I fling myself through the big green door into the mill and go straight to my living area, and my bedroom at the back of the building. I lie on my bed and give in to exhausted sobs.