Baking bread with French connection
On a recent Sunday, Fanch and Viviane Le Guellec dropped in at Alice Delices boulangerie (bakery) at Fort Kochi. They are friends of Alice Floch, who runs the bakery, from France. “We came to know Alice had started a bakery in India,” says Viviane. “So we were keen to taste the items.”
And they liked what they ate. “It was as good as it was in France,” says Viviane. In fact, the Guellecs are customers of Alice at the Paroles de Pain, an organic bakery in Pont-l’Abbé on the west coast of France. “We buy bread and cakes. Sometimes, my retired husband even helps in bread deliveries,” she says.
Another fan is Paris-based Clarisse Alx, and there are many more like him for whom the bakery has become a home away from home. The footfall of foreign guests, especially European and French, to the bakery has increased lately.
Alice first came to Kochi five years ago, and fell in love with the place. “Fort Kochi is a special place, so different from other parts of Kerala and India,” says the 39-year-old. “It is very quiet, and green. In France, we live next to the sea (Pont-l’Abbé on the west coast). Like in Fort Kochi, we also see a lot of fishermen. So, there are a lot of similarities.”
Alice decided to open the bakery towards the end of 2016, when the Kochi Biennale was on, because she felt there would be takers since it was the only French bakery in the vicinity. It was not a big risk as Alice had the necessary experience. She and her husband Julien ran Paroles de Pain back in their hometown.
At her Fort Kochi bakery, she has made special bread to suit the Indian palate. It has cashew nuts, almonds, pistachios and grapes. For certain breads, she adds cinnamon. Apart from this, she makes cashew and brownie cakes and lemon pies. She also offers a French-style thali breakfast. Priced at `300, it is very popular among tourists as well as locals.
Her most recent customer was Frenchwoman and Mollywood star Paris Laxmi. She woke up one morning at her home in Vaikom, 37 km from Kochi, longing for some home food. So she headed to the bakery at Fort Kochi. “By the time I arrived, it was noon, and my favourite Pain Au Chocolat (chocolate croissants) was sold out,” says Laxmi. “So I had a cinnamon cake and a fresh lime juice. And it was equally good.”
To ensure that all is fresh and crisp by 7.45 am—the time the bakery opens for its clientele—Alice has to get up at 4 am to start work. For most of the bread items, she uses a mix of flour, yeast, salt and water.
But to make croissants, she has a separate air-conditioned kitchen. “If I try to make it outside, the butter will melt,” she says. A lot of kneading of the dough is done during the process, and the rolling pin is used several times before the items are put into the large oven, which has been set up in the garden at the back of the bakery.“I love baking,” she says. “But what I enjoy equally is to watch the reaction of the people when they eat the food that I make. Many a time, after they eat a croissant a smile breaks out on their faces.”
Basics of Bread
France has the highest density of bakeries in the world (32,000), less than the 54,000 in 1950.
Bread is such an important part of French cuisine/culture, laws up until 2014 prevented all bakers in Paris taking summer holidays at the same time.
In France, by law a bakery has to make all the bread it sells from scratch in order to have the right
to be called a bakery.