| A couple of years ago the rather lacklustre village boulangerie acquired new owners Nico and Anaïs and the bread is no longer a relative of cotton wool in brown paper. La Pétrie, which seems to be a franchise, supply decent flour along with the branding. Their Pétrisane is a tasty basic loaf of substance at a baguette price that keeps well, or at least longer than a baguette. |  |
While Lou Pan Aspiranais is a solid village baker, the finest for some distance is at Canet 5.5 Km away. Their star loaf is the Paillasse, also known as Pain de Lodève. Paillasse is named after a large straw basket where the dough was left to rise in one large mass after kneading. It is only cut and formed into a twisted loaf immediately before going into the oven. Like sourdough, it's made from a starter rather than using yeast and the dough is particularly wet. All this results in some large holes forming and the need to sell the baked loaf by weight - about 1.30 to 2.40 €. Another secret is the wood burning oven that helps impart a delicious nutty toasted character to the crust - I always ask for "bien cuit".
So serious is this operation that they open at 4 a.m. Expect the Pailasses to be sold out by lunchtime.
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There seems to be some controversy in the bread world over Paillasse. Pain de Lodève had been made since the middle ages but a Swiss baker, claiming to have developed the recipe independently, patented "Pain Paillasse" in the 1990s and has made a fortune out of selling it in hundreds of bakers. Everyone seems to agree it's basically Pain de Lodève.
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