Café Malongo is Fair-trade and made from Arabica coffee beans
Other Café Malongo bars at:
-53, rue Passy
-Lafayette Gourmet 46-48, Boulevard Haussmann
-Monprix, 14 rue du Départ
Read more at my post: Where to find a good cup of coffee in Paris.
The recent issue of Elle à Table reports that eating a croissant may be a healthier and a more diet-friendly alternative the breakfast tartine, a split baguette spread with butter and jam.
A croissant ordinaire or croissant au beurre (made with pure butter) has 200 calories, and 25 grams of carbohydrates.
A tartine composed of one-fifth of a baguette (about 2 ounces of bread) spread with 1 tablespoon of butter and 2 tablespoons of jam has 270 calories and 42 grams of carbohydrates.
Funny, they didn’t mention my preferred pain au chocolat, buttery croissant dough folded around one or two (if you’re lucky) bâtons of dark chocolate, as being diet-friendly.
I wonder why?
The best bread in Paris isn’t made in any Parisian boulangerie, it’s made chez Christoph, the home of an affable German fellow who stunned me at a party a few months back when I savored more than my share of his excellent, hearty, homemade multi-grain bread.
He told me that each Saturday, he bakes just two loaves of multi-grain bread to last him through the week in his tidy Parisian kitchen, overlooking the Pantheon. A biologist during the day, I envision Christoph tinkering in the kitchen until he got his bread just right (he said it took him years). Although I offered to come by on next week to buy bread from him, he brushed me off with a hearty laugh.
(Hey, I wasn’t kidding. I never joke about anything as serious as my pursuit of great bread.)
Working as a pastry chef for 25 years, eating all that chocolate and butter and sugar, I crave all-things salty. And I can’t think of any better vehicle for crunchy grains of coarse salt than chewy, puffy pretzels.
Luckily I was invited to come, roll, and twist away!
When I arrived, he’d already made the dough (very sneaky, presumably guarding the recipe!) So we kneaded the mixture a bit, then divided up little rounds of the soft dough, rolled and pulled them into snake-like ropes, making sure to keep a moderate bulge in the middle, which he said would help them keep their shape better during baking
Once the dough is rolled, he swiftly gathered the two ends, twisted them twice, then folded them over the chubby dough, creating the classic pretzel.
The dough rested for a while, then was refrigerated.
Afterward, he told me to be careful, as he took a suspicious little vial from his cabinet, which contained milky-white little pellets.
“It’s sodium hydroxide”, he said. “It will eat a hole in your clothes.”
…and we’re going to eat this?”, I’m thinking.
He dissolved a handful of pellets in water by stirring briskly, then floated the unbaked twists in this solution, apparently this is what gives pretzels that familiar shiny coating.
A few large grains of salt are sprinkled over, and into the oven they went.
Minutes later….
For some reason, we had to wait a while to eat them.
I’m not sure why. Perhaps it was my American urge to have-it-all-and-have-it-now. It was torture.
After about 30 minutes of watching them resting on the counter (and about 10 unsubtle hints from me…) he finally got the hint and let me sample one. Still slightly warm, yeasty, with that inviting little crackle of salt, they were the perfect pretzel.
Then I had another.
Soon the other guests arrives (I’d already consumed 3 pretzels beforehand, since I have a habit of eating more than my share) and we had a big feast of German food: sauerbraten, Hax’n, Cucumber-Feta Salad (which a woman from Norway brought. It wasn’t very German, but it was tasty), and Alisa’s Mandelbroten.
And I brought a towering German Chocolate Cake for dessert, attempting to navigate through the crowded buses and hectic sidewalks of Paris. I didn’t have much success, but no one seemed to mind. There wasn’t a crumb left, and when no one was looking, I got to lick the lid.
Links:
Homemade Soft Pretzel Recipe (Alton Brown)
Pretzel Croissants (City Bakery)
Soft Pretzels, Refreshed (Smitten Kitchen)
Chocolate Pretzel Recipe (Derby Pie)
A couple weeks ago, someone sent me a thoughtful gift from the US.
A few days later, I get a bill from the delivery company; 42 euros for taxes (the gift was valued at 80 euros, making the tax about 55%.)
So I head to the office of the delivery company, where they show me the official rules for gifts sent and received in France:
“If someone sends you a gift, they must write on the paperwork ‘Unsolicited Gift’”, they explain.
I reply, “So next time I receive a gift I should refuse it if it doesn’t say ‘Unsolicited Gift’ on the paperwork?”
“No, by then it’s too late. If someone’s going to send you an unsolicited gift, you need to tell them to write ‘Unsolicited Gift’ on the paperwork.”
“Oh.”
I stand there for a moment, looking at them to see if they perhaps detect any bit of irony there.
And do they?
So I’m in the supermarket line with my basket of groceries.
The man in front of me unloads his basket, then dumps his plastic basket on top of the neat stack of other shopping baskets.
But instead of nesting it snugly within the other baskets, he just drops his basket on top, askew and cock-eyed, handles facing upward.
So I need to put my basket down to re-arrange his basket so I can set mine down inside and unload it.
This happens to me all the time.
Obviously he set his basket in there before me, and the person before him was kind (and smart) enough to do it properly.
Right?
Or…he had to adjust the others (like I’m gonna have to) and maybe afterwards, like any normal, thinking person who walks upright and not on all fours, do you think he might realize…
“Gee, wouldn’t it be nice of me to stack my basket properly for the next person, not like that idiot in front of me?”
Are you one of those people that just drops their shopping basket wherever they want and doesn’t think about the person behind them?
Are you?
If so, cut it out.
Especially if I’m in line behind you.
Ladurée makes what I consider the best macarons anywhere. And apparently so do many others: the four shops of Ladurée in Paris sell 12,000 macarons each day, over four million per year.
Many Americans raise an eyebrow when confronted with their first French macaron, since macaroons in the US are normally chewy, egg white-based cookies heaped with shredded coconut. But both the French macaron and the American macaroon are based on the crisp Italian meringue cookies made of whipped egg whites, sugar, and ground almonds or bitter apricot kernels, called amaretti. However Ladurée gives credit to Pierre Desfontaines, a distant cousin of founder Louis Ernest Ladurée, who they claim first joined two disks of crisp macarons together with buttercream and ganache fillings in mini-sandwiches to create the now-classic Ladurée
Aside from taking credit for providing Paris with their now-legendary macarons and other sweet treats, the wife of Monsieur Ladurée decided soon after the original bakery opened in 1862 that she would open a the first salon de thé in Paris, where a woman could sit unescorted and not be considered ‘loose’. (My French dictionary doesn’t have a definition for ‘loose woman’…but if you come to Paris and want to see zaftig dames offering their services, take a stroll down the rue Blondel.)
Recently, the macaron wars have been raging in Paris, as pâtissieres try to outdo each other by introducing wild and over-the-top flavors and outrageous packaging. Ladurée has of course entered the fray but with dignity and class, avoiding some of the silliness I’ve seen.
Recently Ladurée macaron flavors include jet-black reglisse (licorice), herbaceous anis vert (anise), and the au courant flavor-combination-of-the-moment in Paris, citron vert-basilic (lime-basil).
But to me, the there’s nothing better than the Ladurée classics: chocolat amer (bittersweet chocolate), dark café, and my absolute favorite, caramel-beurre-salé, a duo of almond-rich macaron cookies oozing smooth caramel…enriched with salted butter.
Ladurée
16, rue Royale
Tel: 01 42 60 21 79
Mètro: Madeleine or Concorde
Related Links and Recipes
10 Insanely Delicious Things You Shouldn’t Miss in Paris
I Love Macarons (Amazon)
Raimo…Glaciers depuis 1947
Raimo
59-61 Boulevard de Reuilly
Tel: 01 43 43 70 17
Mètro: Daumesnil
For a listing of ice cream shops in Paris, check out Les Glaciers of Paris
Because of the congés d’été, almost every boulangerie in Paris shuts down for one month of vacation. Luckily it’s carefully coordinated with the other bakeries in each neighborhood so that Parisians never have to go too far to find fresh bread daily, one of life’s necessities in France.
I see it as an excuse to leave the confines of my quartier and try other bakeries. Now that the weather in Paris has cooled down enough so that taking a stroll is possible without ending up feeling like you just crossed the desert, ending up drenched in sweat, I mètroed across Paris to a bakery on the rue des Martyrs which Clotilde confided had the best baguette aux cereales in Paris.
But as I arrived (after having to exit the first mètro due to a breakdown, then taking one bus and two mètros, which took about an hour including the time it took me persuading each driver and station agent to let me through using the canceled ticket I’d validated at the first mètro), the window shades were drawn and on the door was the all-too-familiar sign “Fermature pour les Congés”.
“Zut!”
Make that…“Merde!”
So yesterday, I hiked up towards the Pantheon to the rue Mouffetard, a rather well-known market street that I generally avoid since it’s rather pricey. Nevertheless, there’s some great places on that street and I wanted to return to le Boulanger de Monge.
(Update 10/08: Both Octave and Xavier Quere are now closed.)
On page #1 of Le Guide des Boulangeries de Paris, there are only three bakeries in Paris given the lofty 3-star status, and le Boulanger de Monge is one of the lucky few. It’s located at a busy intersection and there’s generally a queue of locals waiting for their daily bread. My first visit was a few months back with my friend Frank, and to be quite honest, I wasn’t won over.
In the window was a multi-layer cake, similar to a Napolean, with alternating layers of puff pastry and cream. Draped across the top were the broken end-shards of the cakes, which I suppose were meant to be decorative, but was suprisingly clunky and amateurish. The tarte aux pommes looked better, but tasted somewhat sec and not-really-all-that-interesting (especially in a city full of very interesting tartes aux pommes.) Perhaps it serves me right for ordering apple tart when apples aren’t in season. But since Frank wrote the book on apples, it just seemed like the right alignment of elements.
But what I came for was the bread.
Le Boulanger de Monge is an open bakery. The bakers are right there beside the patrons making the bread, everything in plain view; the organic flour, the bakers (dusted with organic flour), and the wood-fired ovens with crackly, fresh-baked bread emerging every so often. I loved the look of the levain bread, which is slashed prior to baking so comes out with a crusty sunburst baked into the surface. It’s perhaps the most beautiful bread I’ve seen in Paris. But when I got home and tasted it, I missed the sourdough-tang characteristic of my favorite levain bread from Poilâne (which deserves the 3-stars it got from the same guide), as well as the Bay Area’s Acme bakery. The bread also had a cake-like texture that crumbled when you cut it, rather than gluten-y nooks and crannies and holes, the appeal of well-crafted bread.
Yesterday I thought I would try their pain aux cereales, since as many of you know I am smitten with hearty breads chock-full grains and seeds. It cost a whopping 2.60€ for the small loaf they bundled up for me. From the looks of the exterior, I didn’t have high hopes for the loaf but ordered it anyways. When I hurried home and sliced it open, there were so few grains that I wondered where they got off calling it aux ceriales?
I suppose that I should have simply ordered a baguette, since that’s how these bread guides judge bakeries in Paris, so perhaps I need to go back since the third-time may be the proverbial charm. They did have beautiful looking little round cakes, which I will try next time; the chocolate ones in particular look rich and tasty.
Le Boulanger de Monge
123, rue Monge, 5th
M: Les Gobelins or Censier-Daubenton
tel: 01 43 37 54 20
Closed Monday
(They have a few other addresses in Paris as well.)
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