Provençal Portraits: The Wood-Burning Heart of Pernes-les-Fontaines

As I enter the boulangerie of Jean-François Gimenes he is in the process of rolling out a pâte feuiletté, a puff pastry, folding it seven times. The next day he will cut it into long loaves, and put it into his wood-fired oven on a long paddle to bake.

He has been here since 2:00 in the morning. He fired up his oven just after 3:00. His day will end at 12:30 p.m. when he sweeps up the last bit of flour.

“That’s the way it is, I have to get everything done,” he says, shrugging his shoulders.

Meganne and Jean-François Gimenes in front of the
wood-burning oven

Jean-François Gimenes was born in Pernes-les-Fontaines  back when it was still a small town.

After years of working in a variety of fields, he woke up one morning and had the crazy idea to do something completely different. He packed up his knapsack, toured all of France, and returned to the south with a passion for baking bread, but à l’ancienne, in the old style of baking in a wood-fired oven, a time-honoured tradition, specifically with levain, or sourdough.

After some years in Carpentras, the bakery in his home town came for sale, he snapped it up, and has been baking up a storm for the last ten years.

It is the oldest shop in Pernes still in existence, he says proudly. He used to stop by this very bakery as a boy to buy bread baked in the very same ancient oven.

And it remains the heart of the community, a meeting place. Pernes is now a city, but maintains the spirit of a village.

“That’s what I love about it, this spirit. And in the context of this bakery it’s got a friendly atmosphere and it’s close to everyone, it’s in the centre of Pernes, that’s something I really love.”

The entrance to his tiny shop is modest, nondescript, nearly unchanged since its founding in 1890.

As I open the door the next day, a chilly Saturday morning, his daughter Meganne at the till, I am welcomed by a burst of warm air and a crowd of convivial people chatting. Many of them are friends, who wait in line patiently for their bread, most of the loaves set to the side, as locals know to reserve their loaf in advance. Otherwise, the shelves are normally bare by noon.

Meanwhile, Jean-François deftly manoeuvres his long paddle in the vast, hot oven, pulling out crusty loaves, rearranging others, trying not to poke customers filing into the shop.

That magnificent ancient oven is the centrepiece of the bakery. For him the wood oven evokes everything that his ancestors used to do.

“I’m doing the same thing. I’m reproducing what the past generations did.

“It’s the love of the craft. I have no desire to work with an electric oven or with yeast, not at all. It’s the choice I made and I love it. It’s hard work, but I like that.

Jean- François loads the wood into the lower portion of the oven. The wood heats the stone slab above where the loaves will be placed. After two hours, it’s ready.

The wood stove is what gives his bread its unique texture, which I adore: the crust much thicker and chewier than industrial bread made with yeast. I’m also interested to learn that the shape of a bread affects its taste. For example a baguette and a miche (a round ball) could be made with the same dough, but the baguette will cook quicker, at higher heat, the larger loaves will cook slower, over the dying embers. The flavour with be completely different.

“That changes the taste and it’s something that you can only achieve with a wood-fired oven,” he says.

I tear off a piece of that feuiletté loaf which he was rolling out the day before and the crust shatters into a magnificent shower of flaky, light layers.

It’s just one of at least a dozen types of bread and specialty bread Jean-François bakes each day. He is best known for his humourously-named Pernoise, a slim loaf which he bakes every day, and the heftier Pernois, which he only bakes on Saturdays.

But the work has begun much earlier. As he uses only sourdough, the mixture starts fermenting two days in advance and is then baked on the third.

Creativity is essential to his craft. He loves experimenting with different types of flour, mixing and matching until it’s just right. For example, petite épautre de Sault, an ancient grain of the region (similar to spelt) will form the basis of an enormous square loaf that customers will buy by the slice, which could be a six- or 12-cm slice, or more! He also uses rye, whole wheat, buckwheat and various other organic flours.

“I’ve always loved to create different varieties, to work with new types of flour. After that, well, it’s humour. It’ something I love, to experiment.”

And evidently, lots of ideas emerge if you work all alone in the middle of the night!

He accepts the solitary nature of his work. “I like working all alone, it’s a choice. I do my research, I am the only one responsible for the quality, and I pull my very own bread out of the oven.

Jean-François once contemplated packing up and moving to Canada. But his roots are here and he’s committed to the community.

And the citizens of Pernes-les-Fontaines – and visitors - are all the happier to be able to order their loaf of Pernoise on a weekday and Pernois on a Saturday.

 
Boulangerie Gimenes Jean-François
51 Rue de la République
84210 Pernes-les-Fontaines
04 90 60 00 74


*This article first appeared in Le Sun Languedoc & Provence

Provence Profiles: Nougat Silvain – A Family Tradition

They call themselves paysans nougatiers, nougat peasant-farmers. That’s because the Silvain family cultivate the almonds and honey, the two ingredients that go into nougat. Their almond trees grow in the sunny meadows and hills at the foot of Mont Ventoux.

“Nougat in Provence, it’s a part of our heritage. In the families of country people, nougat is made in the home,” says Pierre Silvain, through translation by his daughter Geraldine.

“Our grandmother always made it for the whole family for Christmas.”

They put the emphasis on paysan, to indicate that they are close to the earth, they care about the land.

“We are farmers first. We have been farming for six generations. We couldn’t be nougat makers without being farmers.”

“The work of a farmer, it’s our history, it’s our culture, it’s our roots. It’s a passion linked directly to the earth,” Silvain continues.

Philippe and Pierre Silvain

There are two kinds of nougat, black and white. The black is more traditional, served as part of the treis desserts, the 13 desserts of Christmas Eve.

The honey is caramelized briefly at high heat, and then lots of almonds are added. For white nougat, the caramelization process takes three hours, over low heat, to which egg whites are added to yield a more fluffy texture. They produce 32 tonnes of nougat every year.

Their shop, in the small plane-tree-lined town of Saint-Didier near Pernes-les-Fontaines, is popular among locals and a real destination for visitors.

Their heavy shelves of award-winning nougat are augmented by pots of honey, fruits confits, jams, as well as almonds in their raw state, or coated with salt, goat cheese, chocolate, or even algae.

And it’s definitely a family enterprise. Pierre has been working alongside his brother Philippe, as well as their spouses and children, each with his or her own specialization, for more than two decades.

“It’s a history of our family,” he says, proudly.

Nougat Silvain
4 Chemin Neuf, 84210 Saint-Didier

*This article first appeared in Le Sun Languedoc & Provence

Provence Profiles: Tasting Wine with Arnaud de la Chanonie

Tasting Wine with Arnaud de la Chanonie

“French people cannot think of wine without cuisine and cannot think of cuisine without wine.”

Arnaud de la Chanonie is setting out a succulent dish of cabbage and duck while his wife, Isabelle, clears away the fresh salad of fennel, apple and thinly-sliced raw beets we’ve just finished. He has carefully selected wines to accompany each dish. 

Arnaud is a wine merchant in Provence, living in the tiny hilltop village of La Roque-sur-Pernes, and runs a wine shop in the lively Marché de la Gare in Pernes-les-Fontaines. He also represents a number of wineries in the region and distributes them around the world, mostly to Asia.

Arnaud de la Chanonie at his wine shop in the Marché de la Gare



He elaborates on the relationship between wine and cuisine, on the wonderful combination of the culture of food and wine in France – of people enjoying a meal with friends and family.

“It’s something you enjoy and you savour,” he says.

“It’s about creating a magical synergy that elevates the wine and the cuisine to a higher level, about emphasizing flavours and creating a beautiful combination.”

This is the Ventoux area, a place that formerly put more emphasis on producing a large quantity of wine, rather than quality. But that has all changed. There are new, younger producers making exciting wines, mostly from Grenache, Syrah and Mourvèdre grapes – at affordable prices.

By contrast, nearby is the oldest appellation of France, Chateauneuf-du-Pape, celebrated around the world (thanks in part to well-known wine writers in America). The vines are more than 100 years old, pushing deep into the impossibly rocky soil, fed by rains from nearby Mont Ventoux and the sandy soil of the Rhône River, adding to the complexity of the wine. It’s a deep heritage, Arnaud affirms.

The wine is appreciated for its character, mostly based on the Grenache grape.

“It’s a generous wine. It’s a very sensual wine. It’s full-bodied, it’s very easy to combine with all sorts of cuisines. These are wines to cellar for years.”

Arnaud loves travelling in the southern Rhône, visiting the winemakers, talking with them, and tasting, of course.

“You meet people with deep roots, or people who have recently invested in a property, coming from all over the world to beautiful Provence. It’s as interesting as tasting the wine.”

The caveau in Gigondas

We take his cue and tour the verdant region of the Côtes du Rhône-Villages at higher altitudes, with bottles bearing the names of the villages, including Gigondas, one of the most appreciated appellation d’origine contrôllée. In the adorable village with the backdrop of the jagged Dentelles de Montmirail, the town caveau offers tastings of dozens of local wines, including older vintages – and drinkable now - that are not even available at the wineries themselves.

Nearby, Vacqueyras, Baumes-de-Venise, Séguret, Rasteau and Cairanne, villages perched on lush vine-covered hills, offer similar pleasures.

Arnaud loves giving advice to his regular customers, trying to please them, to find the perfect wine to accompany a dish, but also trying to help them make new discoveries.

“People have their own taste, they like their own styles of wine, but sometimes we shouldn’t think, ‘what do I like?’, we should just try to understand the story that the wine has to tell us.”

Each wine region has a different climate, a different soil, different grapes, so the balance of the wine, the character of the wine, is going to be different.

“What really matters to me is the identity, how honest a wine is according to its region, its origins.

“Taste as many wines as possible, be curious and enjoy,” he says, laughing.

And his passion really comes through.

 “If I say to someone that I love this wine, I love this producer, I had so much pleasure discovering and tasting it, then they will try it and 90% of the people will love it.

“So it’s a very rewarding kind of work,” he says with a smile.

But travelling and discovering other wine regions is also great. It’s the pleasure of diversity that you find in art, in music, in painting, in architecture, he says. In fact, he draws a comparison with wine tasting to appreciating a piece of music, its rhythms, its forms, its elegance or complexity.

Our discussion returns to the wines of the region.

“I love Rhône wines because I was born here and I feel many good things when I taste this wine, when I meet the people who make these wines.

“It is not just the style of these wines – of course there is the tasting part, the pleasure you can share with your friends, tasting these beautiful wines - generous, full-bodied, sexy wines - but there is also a cultural part. Wine is very much related to our culture.”

Marché de la Gare
217 Avenue de la Gare
Pernes-les-Fontaines

*This article first appeared in Le Sun Languedoc & Provence

 

Provence Profiles: Claudine Vigier, cheesemaker extraordinaire

We are overwhelmed by the heady aromas as we enter La Fromagerie du Comtat in the centre of Carpentras, the boutique decorated festively with milk jugs. We are in the heart of the Vaucluse, with the white-capped Mont Ventoux looming in the distance.

The glass cases in the shop are loaded with every type of local goat cheese imaginable, aged comté from the mountains, fragrant blue cheeses.

This is the domain of cheesemaker Claudine Vigier-Barthélemy, voted best cheese maker in all of France, 2009.

“The heart of my métier is to select the cheese, age it and transform it,” she says, her broad smile winning me over immediately.

Beneath the tiny shop is a 50m cellar where she ages her cheese. (There is also a 30m cellar for the special wines she sells). There she washes a nutty Beaufort mountain cheese with a mix of water and salt, enhanced by aromatic herbs; she ages a blue-veined Fourme des Dentelles de Montmirail with Muscat wine from nearby Baume de Venise; in winter she inserts slivers of black truffles, tuber melanosporum, from nearby Mont Ventoux, into a woody and resiny Vacherin de Mont d’Or.

Locals and visitors from afar come to taste the special cheeses she ages from around the country as well as the goat cheeses chosen from just around the corner.

“We really have a signature on our cheese!” she says.

Vigier claims she was destined to be a cheesemaker.

“It wasn’t me who chose my vocation, I’m just naturally called towards milk and the making of cheese,” she explains.

Her grandparents were cheesemakers and she recalls helping out by filling pails of milk. She found the transformation to cheese mysterious and enticing.

Her father was also a passionate cheesemaker and the young Claudine enjoyed spending Sundays with him. Whenever he offered her a taste and saw her smile, it gave him great pleasure. It was about sharing, eating well and good times.

“I keep that memory of him, it’s brilliant!” she says.

Vigier also shares a touching story about her mother, who was born near Mont Ventoux, very prematurely, during the war. She was so tiny, she was placed in a shoebox filled with cotton, placed near their three goats, for warmth. And because she was so premature she was fed goat’s milk. Miraculously, she survived.

“One could say my mother was saved by the goat,” she says. “Then I was born to dedicate my life to say thank-you for that. It was thanks to the goat milk that we are all here – my mother, me, voila!

“I pay homage emblematically every day to milk,” she says.

Vigier also insists that the Vaucluse has absolutely the best terroir in all of France for making goat cheese, fromage de chèvre. Herds of goats roam in the garrigue, that scrubby landscape full of wild herbs, where they feast on a huge variety of plants, giving the cheese its complexity. Cheese is made traditionally, following the natural cycle of the animals and of the seasons. The animals are given no hormones and they let nature take its course.

Her boutique displays goat cheeses in all stages of ripeness, some absolutely fresh, some oozing unctuously, some coated in herbs or ash, some hard and crusty, good for grating on salads.

Vigier remains dedicated to her base in Carpentras.

“These are my origins, my culture. When I was young I came to the market in Carpentras. I grew up with the rhythm of the seasons, the rhythm of the harvest.”

Just like the goats.

During her brief “holidays” she enjoys spending time with colleagues making cheese, such as gruyère, digging her hands in, meeting the people, being in contact with the animals, understanding the magic of the cheese she sells.

“It’s made by people who have such passion, who reinforce my passion.

“I’ve really dedicated my life to cheese. When I touch the cheese I feel something that fulfills me.”

And like her father, for Vigier, it’s all a part of sharing, eating well and good times.

La Fromagerie du Comtat, 23 place de la Marie, Carpentras, open Tuesday to Saturday

*This article originally appeared in Languedoc & Provence Sun, 2016.