Pain Medieval Boulangerie, Sablet

As I have said in previous post, we have two boulangeries in Sablet. We are fortunate because while neighboring Gigondas and Seguret might be more charming, Seguret is classified as a Plus Beaux Village de France, and better known, Gigondas is renown for their red wine, they don't have boulangeries.

One of our criteria for villages when we were looking about for a house was that the village had to have some commercial services open year around like cafés and boulangeries. We wanted to be able to walk to a boulangerie every morning.

The fact we have two boulangeries assures that the villagers of Sablet have freshly baked baguettes every day as the boulangeries coordinate their days of fermeture - closing and congés annuels -vacation closing, so that one of the boulangeries is always open.

This is the boulangerie that is located closest to our house. Their days of weekly closing are Monday and Tuesday. On the days madame is open, it seems there is always a line out the door and cars are parked with motors running while their drivers dash into the boulangerie to get their daily bread.



As each new person joins the line waiting to be served by madame, you hear the newcomer say "bonjour madame, bonjour monsieur" and responded to accordingly. When you get to the front of the line, upon hearing what you want, madame will generally asked about the cuisson - baking, you desire, meaning how brown do you want the baguette or croissant, more or less?

Between orders, madame calls out to her son who is the baker for the boulangerie about the status of baguettes baking in the big oven.

Upon arriving back in Sablet a few weeks ago, upon entering into the boulangerie, we immediately noticed that they had renovated the boulangerie to better accommodate the line of customers who gather through out the day.

As you know, I am a co-owner of a small French bistro called Bistro Des Copains. At the Bistro, we have two large wood burning ovens, one of which was specially designed and built for baking bread.

I assumed that the boulangerie in Sablet would have a similar old fashion oven. With the renovations, they opened up the boulangerie so you can see the actual baking area. With the baking area now visible, my fantasy about how the baguettes were baked was jolted as the baker can be seen mixing dough or adding bread to a big modern oven.



Despite my shattered fantasy, rest assured that the boulangerie bakes wonderful baguettes and croissants. Several mornings each week, in addition to the plain croissants and chocolate croissants, there are almond croissants which my wife loves.