Baguettes, Financiers et Croissants

Today (Friday September 6th) was an exciting day...it was the day we were going on a boulangerie tour. Christine found an English-speaking tour that allowed children ages four and older (through www.atasteofparis.com) to see where they make and bake the pastries and also let us make some ourselves. So we woke up early and took the metro across town to meet our tour guide, Yvonne, and to tour the boulangerie, Miss Manon.


We learned they had different flour to make the baguettes, croissants and whole grain breads. They showed us the giant mixer to make the dough and then pulled a tray of dough that had already been prepared and rising. A machine with a big grid cut the dough into pieces and one by one the pieces were thrown into a machine with a cloth conveyor belt that rolls/flings the dough into an elongated stick shape. From there you can round it out to make a circular bread or stretch it out to make a baguette or braid it to for yet a differently shaped bread (sorry, I didn't catch any of the specific bread shape names...our baker had a heavy Mali accent in his French). The boys particularly had fun learning to braid.

Then it was upstairs to the sweet pastry section where a baker helped us to make "financiers." As the story goes, the Wall Street-type bankers didn't like getting the croissant crumbs on their fancy suits so they asked the bakers to come up with an alternative. Thus was born a pastry that was mixed and poured into little molds to make lovely, crumbless, sweet balls that were easy to serve alongside an espresso. They were named "financiers" after the financial businessmen who requested their creation. A baker helped us by melting the butter and once it turned nut-brown, he poured it into the almond flour, added a little sugar and let us stir. The boys mixed it all on their own. Then the batter was put into a piping bag and we each got a turn to pour a small amount into a row of silicone baking semi-circles (some with more precision than others).

While our bread and financiers baked, we watched a baker roll out croissant dough, add "batons de chocolat" (literally chocolate sticks) and fold over the dough several times to make pain au chocolat. Lastly he rolled out croissant dough, cut it into long triangles and let us try to roll our croissants. These we didn't get to keep and Dave got a kick out of the fact that once we left the area they unrolled ours and fixed them to make them suitable for sale. ;)

The boys all proudly collected our baked goods and were so excited to get them home and dig in!

We walked around the Jewish quarter a little and then down the quay to Ile-de-la-Cite to see what we could of Notre Dame. It was completely fenced off as they reconstruct after the devastating fire but impressive nonetheless and perhaps memorable for the boys some day in the future when they return as adults and can see it in it's full glory. On a positive note, while visiting Place des Vosges that might have been uninteresting to the kids, we spied a playground tucked under the perimeter trees. How fun!

At the end of a long day of walking and six flights of stairs to the apartment and the boys are tired!