NONFICTION - 
​   With the Theme of Making or Breaking Bread     

"The siren’s call that brings Francophiles back
to Paris is different for each of us."

​                                   Photo by Weebly.com                                    

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The Picasso of Pastry
by  Cathy Fiorello

​It has never been my desire to see the world. I have friends who have embarked on such a mission. They live with a mental map, checking off where they’ve been, flagging where they will go next. When I started traveling, after the kids were grown and gone, I found a place and lost my heart; all I wanted was to be in that place again.
 
The siren’s call that brings Francophiles back to Paris is different for each of us. Its renowned boulangeries are high on my list of reasons to return. To borrow a Michelin Guide barometer, the breads of Paris are alone worth the journey. Comfort food for me is bread and butter, simple and sublime, when the bread is worth standing on line to buy and the butter is unadulterated, not a single percentage of its fat reduced.
 
In France, bread-baking is considered an art and Parisians are discerning patrons. I never met a Parisian who wasn’t ready to go to battle in defense of his favorite boulangerie, dismissing all others with characteristic French disdain. When in Paris, I too have a favorite bakery. There is no doubt in my mind, and in the writings of the French gourmands who led me to him, that the breads and breakfast pastries of Pierre Hermé have no equal. He was awarded the Legion of Honor by French President Jacques Chirac, and Vogue has anointed him “The Picasso of Pastry.” How could a foodie be in Paris and not find her way to his door? 
 
Finding his door is easier said than done. Armed with his address and assured by our hotel’s concierge that it was within walking distance, “You can’t miss it,” he said, my husband and I set out for 72, rue Bonaparte in the 6th arrondissement—and we missed it, twice, walking past the shop without knowing we were there. We had been drooling at the windows of Parisian boulangeries for years, those warm, fragrant places whose tantalizing aromas drift outside, lure you in and entice you to stay. Not so at Pierre Hermé. At first passby, nothing in the window hinted at the wondrous confections within.
 
Be forewarned! This is not a friendly place. Locals and tourists alike pass through these hallowed doors quietly, respectfully, almost as if entering a church. Though kneeling was not required, I would willingly have bent a knee in homage. One queues patiently, touches nothing and prays that the answer to a plaintive “Je voudrais…” will be “Oui,” declared by one black-suited clerk who bags your selections and another who accepts your inflated Euros, which you are happy to pay without asking “Combien?” 

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The shop is not large; it is long and narrow. The queue inside is single file, the ambience is hushed. On the left side of the aisle are glass cases displaying exquisitely glazed and iced cakes and tarts bearing the elegant gold Pierre Hermé logo. We walked quietly past these. We snubbed the lavish pyramid of his renowned macarons, said to rival those of Laduree, considered by many the benchmark for those meringue-based confections. We focused instead on the right side of the aisle where the shelves were laden with what we came for, the viennoiserie, or morning pastries:  croissants which alone are worth the journey; the shop’s signature breakfast offering, Kouign-Amann, Breton for butter cake glazed with caramelized sugar, so light and luscious you know you want another before you finish the first; the Bostock, a flat disk of a brioche soaked in an almond and orange syrup and filled with almond cream. We thought we had bought too many but devoured all of them. We justified our shameless indulgence by asking each other, “Who knows when we’ll be here again?” We were there again the next morning, again buying too many pastries, again eating all of them.
 
One buys these delicious confections at Pierre Hermé but does not eat them there. Thanks to David Lebovitz’s “The Sweet Life in Paris,” a book about his ex-pat experiences, we knew just where to take our breakfast feast. Lebovitz put us on to the Café de la Mairie, around the corner from the bakery and across the street from St. Sulpice Church, with an unobstructed view of one of the city’s most famous fountains. Waiters here, he assures us, are receptive to people eating their Hermé pastries at the café’s tables. “Buy lots of coffee,” he advises.
 
He was right. Our waiter not only welcomed us, he brought plates and napkins, which we needed because one bite of the croissant sent an avalanche of buttery flakes cascading down our jackets, onto our laps, and down to the ground—where the luckiest, plumpest pigeons in Paris diligently cleaned up the mess.
 
About that coffee. While it may be true that France has the best bread in the world, it may also be true that it has the world’s worst coffee. To begin with, before your leave home you need to take a course on how to order coffee in a French café; you’ll get no help from your waiter. When you think you’ve nailed it and know what you want, your waiter will bring you what he thinks you should have. It will be vile, and you will pay dearly for it. Lebovitz has a solution for this problem, too. “You want coffee? Go to Italy!”
 
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Editor's Note:  This story appears in Cathy’s recently published book: Paris Sharing the Magic (2023), available on Amazon.
 

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​Find your passion and follow it!   -  Oprah Winfrey
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Cathy Fiorello’s passions are food, Paris, and writing. A morning at a farmers’ market is her idea of excitement and visiting Paris is her idea of heaven. And much of her writing is about food and Paris. She worked in publishing in New York, freelanced for magazines during her child-rearing years, then re-entered the work world as an editor. She moved to San Francisco in 2008 and published a memoir, Al Capone Had a Lovely Mother. In 2018, she published a second memoir, Standing at the Edge of the Pool. Cathy has two children and four grandchildren. Her mission is to make foodies and Francophiles of them all.

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