Meet a Maître Artisan Boulanger

I had crowned Dominique Duclos a maître artisan boulanger long before the Chambre de Métiers de Seine-Maritime did.  Every time we go through the town of Yvetôt on our way to the country house in Normandie, we stop at the Duclos boulangerie on Friday afternoon to stock up on the best bread for the weekend.  Usually as we approach, we’ll discuss what we should select.  That’s because there’s so much to choose from,(see below).  We go in and make our purchases from the always- smiling Duclos couple, usually walking out with more loaves than we had intended.  Then, as soon as we get in the car and get our mouths stuffed with ragged hunks of thick, chewy crust, I can usually be counted on to declare to Denis, “Lui, il est vraiment un maître boulanger.  Si je pourrais juste trouver du tel pain à Paris.” (What a master baker.  If only I could find such bread in Paris.) 

Last Saturday, when Denis bought his copy of the local newspaper (le Courrier Cauchois, the reading of which is de rigueur for his Saturday morning), he waved it under my nose.  On the front page was our baker, Dominique Duclos.  He had been declared (officially) a maître artisan boulanger, meaning he had achieved one of the highest rankings for his craft (and heaven knows, the competition is stiff.)  “About time,” I sniffed to Denis.

While M Duclos started out with traditional baguettes, pain de campagne, and  pain aux céréales, the purchase of the wonderful Fermento gave him the gargantuan quantities of levain he needed to set his creative juices flowing.  In fact, M Duclos is not only a maître artisan boulanger, but also a créateur.  His first creation was the flute Normande,  borne out of his desire to create a baguette with the soul of levain that was fabricated with immediately local Norman flour.  The flute, ornamented with a signature series of coups de lame on its surface that makes it resemble a beard of wheat, has flattened the competition in many a concours. 

M Duclos’ creations are too numerous to list all-inclusively, and they vary with the season.  Here’s a sampling:  cider/apple bread, made with good Norman hard cider and chunks of apples (pair it with Camembert!);  chestnut bread, from organic chestnut flour (Denis’ favorite); Beaujolais bread, to celebrate the arrival of the Beaujolais nouveau; pain d’épautre, made with an ancient rustic wheat, nutty and chewy; pain aux noix et noisettes, packed to bursting with hazelnuts and walnuts (my favorite); bread with seaweed to celebrate the holidays…  All this in addition to rye with sunflower and flaxseed, whole wheats, and waldkornbrot.  There are also three superb companions to the flute Normande, made with all local flours:  le pain Normande, le pave d’Yvetot,and the incomparably rustic pain d’autrefois, of stone-milled wheat and rye, a huge, irregular oblong bread whose superlative crust is scored with crosshatching, and which boasts the highest levain content of all M Duclos breads.  Oh, and the best walnut bread I’ve ever tasted, with lightly toasted walnuts and a touch of fragrant walnut oil.  To fuel all this creativity, I think I counted at least 20 different kinds of flour in the kitchen of the bakery.