{"id":798,"date":"2015-01-29T02:45:15","date_gmt":"2015-01-29T09:45:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rolledscroll.com\/?p=798"},"modified":"2015-01-29T03:14:10","modified_gmt":"2015-01-29T10:14:10","slug":"french-baking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rolledscroll.com\/news\/archives\/798","title":{"rendered":"FRENCH BAKING"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"IMG_2970\"<\/a><\/p>\n

FRENCH BAKING<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

I’m currently\u00a0in the South of France, where the countryside in warmer seasons\u00a0is saturated in lavender and olive, yellow\u00a0and\u00a0azure. But it is winter even here, and so the colours are more subdued–except in bakery windows!<\/p>\n

On this vacation again I’ve pressed my nose up against the glass of many patisseries<\/em> and\u00a0boulangeries\u00a0<\/em>(they still make a difference here between which shops\u00a0sell sweet\u00a0delicacies and which yeasty breads). I’ve sampled my fair share as well, with more to come. And\u00a0there’s\u00a0one thing I’ve noticed over\u00a0and again:<\/p>\n

French baking<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0a<\/strong>lways tastes as good as it looks.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

This comes as a surprise to me every time I bite into\u00a0a crusty\u00a0croissant,\u00a0<\/em>flakes flying into the air, or lick a dollop of chocolate from a mousse cake, or crush the ripe raspberry of a tart, its flavour exploding in my mouth.<\/p>\n

It surprises me that such beauty to the eye gives\u00a0such pleasure to the taste buds,\u00a0that the gastronomic reality is equal to the artistic\u00a0presentation. (I sound almost sacramental here!) I have to admit that this is not the truth for most Canadian bakeries, where too often\u00a0pristine cakes smothered\u00a0in snowy icing and piped in berry blue taste of styrofoam wrapped in bitter lard–a temptation only to naive children who won’t believe for a while yet that what you see isn’t necessarily what you get.<\/p>\n

And yet here in France, it seems, every bite is true.<\/p>\n

I see a philosophical corollary here, of course: Am I internally the person\u00a0I attempt to project outwardly? Am I made of quality ingredients or substandard fluff? Does my character satisfy or disappoint?<\/p>\n

But I have to be honest here. Call me shallow, but more important to me at this moment–as I wander the cobblestones and backstreets of a country where father taught son taught grandson\u00a0the great culinary arts, where ingredients are treated as family secrets, where agriculture is a proud tradition and people shop the local markets daily–more important is my mouth.<\/p>\n

French baking\u00a0could almost convert me to hedonism.
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FRENCH BAKING I’m currently\u00a0in the South of France, where the countryside in warmer seasons\u00a0is saturated in lavender and olive, yellow\u00a0and\u00a0azure. But it is winter even here, and so the colours are more subdued–except in bakery windows! On this vacation again I’ve pressed my nose up against the glass of many patisseries and\u00a0boulangeries\u00a0(they still make a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rolledscroll.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rolledscroll.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rolledscroll.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rolledscroll.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rolledscroll.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=798"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.rolledscroll.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":810,"href":"https:\/\/www.rolledscroll.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798\/revisions\/810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rolledscroll.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rolledscroll.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rolledscroll.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}