In Angers, France, at a bakery called Boulangerie des Carmes, you can behold (and taste) the most beautiful brioche loaves gracing bakery shelves — I’ll say it — universewide.
They are perfectly and only slightly sweet, complex, with a textured crumb that makes even the most trained baker marvel. This particular brioche is a testament to practice and evolution. To craft a loaf this exquisite takes a dedicated lifetime of bringing things back to basics.
I’ve yet to meet a baker more dedicated to this ideal than Richard Ruan, the owner of Boulangerie des Carmes and a winner of the M.O.F. (Meilleur Ouvrier de France), a prestigious honor for craftspeople. His hands have not only given the world this best, by my estimation, brioche, but he also maintains an Old World standard of quality that is neither stodgy nor outdated.
Recipe: Brioche
His bakery occupies the corner space in a traditional cream-white limestone building, overlooking the Maine River, which flows into the seductive, often low and subtle Loire. There you will find a proper deck oven, a few stand mixers and one planetary mixer. Besides those, though, you will find only tools that require a human hand and body to power them: a hand-cranked sheeter, used to laminate dough, large rolling pins, small scoring tools; French wooden proofing boxes that seem like only pretty antiques but are used to leaven bread as purposefully as they have been for hundreds of years.
Ruan has an understanding of his materials, including his equipment, and he believes that these beautiful wooden boxes proof and season the bread better than contemporary metal boxes and are far more functional in design. Nothing in his bakery is done without great intention. The space itself is small and purposefully limited, as is the production volume.
This pared-down commitment to analog sets Ruan’s ethos apart from so many bakeries today, especially in the United States, where volume is a necessity for anyone daring to make a living from flour and water and sugar. From these intentional limitations, which require a slower and more deliberate understanding of each step and method, Ruan has found a principled way of providing for his community and teaching new generations about how less is always more.
Some of the smartest, deepest and most earnest people in our world are bakers.
I’ve had the very good fortune of not only tasting Ruan’s brioche, pâté aux prunes and magnificent pain au chocolat, but I have also been extremely lucky to have spent a little time with him in a kitchen in France. With a warm and very honest twinkle in his eye, as we assembled 30 croque madames to serve the workshop students we were hosting for the week, he kindly laughed as he gave me French lessons. So much of this small interaction gave me insights into his nature and allowed me a loving glimpse into a generous baker’s heart.
It brought me back to wondering why bakers are the way they are. There is a quietness, and a kindness, to their lives that veers into almost monastic behavior. Perhaps it is simply the ancientness of being a fire maker — tending a hearth really brings something out in a person. I’ve been working in restaurants since I was 15, and one thing I keep learning over and over is that some of the smartest, deepest and most earnest people in our world are bakers.
It raises other questions for me: What does baking require of us? It requires patience, thoughtfulness, an eye to your surroundings, otherwise known as simply paying attention and responding accordingly. Maybe most important, it calls to light a common refusal to let the world shift your perspective, to hold true to a thing you believe to be true in all the small movements and steps and to return to them again and again.
There is a saying that goes something like: “Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.” I think of that a lot when I dig into what I find so remarkable about bakers. To dedicate your life to such an ancient practice, one that is grown from such ritual and devotion, well, it feels like a kind of spiritual calling to me. And every time I take a bite of Ruan’s brioche, I find myself steeped in belief.
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