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A visit to Quebec

I had the good fortune to spend a few days last month in Central Quebec where I visited a historic mill and its bakery and met with people who love to talk about what makes them tick. Even though it wasn’t all about bread, it all had to do with bread one way or another and therefore belongs on Farine.
It is a long story however and to make it more convenient to read only part of it or to jump from one aspect of it to the next, I divided it among different posts:
If bread is all you care to read about, then go nibble at

.

If you like old-fashioned bakeries, come with me on a visit to

where, as a bonus, you’ll be allowed to drool at your heart’s content.

If mills are your thing, Patrick the miller will show you around

.

History buffs will probably like

.

Should you wonder how it came about that an early-19th century mill was restored and a bakery put in, then you’ll want to read

.


Finally lovers of nature and the landscape, gardeners and fellow passionate people will want to meet

.

Whatever you choose, enjoy!

The Gift of Bread

Francis H. (Frank) Cabot
Related stories:
The taste of a madeleine crumbled in a spoonful of tea suddenly brought back to Proust whole sections of his past previously hidden from his consciousness and In Search of Lost Time was born. Stretching things a bit, it could be argued that Frank Cabot whom I met during a recent trip to La Malbaie, Charlevoix County (Central Quebec), had the opposite experience. He recalled vividly how life was in the area in the twenties and thirties (“Food-wise it was a paradise, just like France. But everything changed after World War II. Nothing tasted the same afterwards”) and what he wanted back was that taste.
Moved by a deep affection for Charlevoix County where his family has been living/summering for nine generations, and very much aware of the fact that, in this corner of the North Shore of the Saint-Lawrence River , the past was being erased not only from the culture but also from the landscape, Frank and his wife Anne founded Heritage Charlevoix, a land trust whose sole raison d’être was to preserve the county’s heritage by buying and restoring its old buildings. One of the buildings thus saved from neglect and ultimately destruction was the “moulin de la Rémy” (the mill on the Rémy River) in Baie-Saint-Paul, 50 km (31 miles) south of La Malbaie.
Moulin de la Rémy, today fully restored and in operation
The building hadn’t been selected at random. Mills make flour and flour makes bread and bread is more than a basic necessity. It reflects a culture and its traditions. The cardboard bread to which the area was becoming addicted bore no relation to the fragrant loaves which Frank remembered. Along with some of its landmark buildings and vestiges of the past, what Frank and Anne Cabot wanted to restore to the region was good bread.
Boulangerie La Rémy
They found a beautiful old farm building in a nearby village, bought it, had it transported next to the mill and transformed into a bakery (with housing upstairs for the bakers). Equipped with two brick wood- fire ovens and using flour milled at the mill, Boulangerie de la Rémy now produces up to 420 loaves a week in season. Customers flock in throughout the day, some of them coming from as far as Quebec City to stock on bread, viennoiseries and flour.
The bread of yesteryear is back in Charlevoix County but the golden loaves which come flying out of the door are not necessarily the same as the ones Frank remembers from his childhood. Whether or not hazelnut-cranberry bread or crunchy baguettes were made in Baie-Saint-Paul before World War II doesn’t matter though. More than the actual taste of bread, what Frank wanted to give modern days inhabitants of the county is a taste for the real thing, so that they would care enough to support local artisan bakers and they do. There are other bakeries in the area, some of which may have pre-existed Boulangerie de la Rémy, and more are opening up. Bread is multiplying and Frank and Anne can only wonder and rejoice. They certainly had a hand in this miracle.

For all practical info regarding the mill and/or the bakery, please refer to the Moulin de la Rémy’s website.

The Mill on the Rémy (Moulin de la Rémy)

First built in 1825 on the Rémy River in Baie-Saint-Paul against the densely forested backdrop of the Charlevoix mountains in Central Quebec, the mill produced flour from 1826-1827 to 1950. When the undershot wheel fell apart, it was replaced by a turbine and the miller, Félix Fortin, switched to producing animal feed. In the late 80’s, Fortin retired and the mill stood abandoned until bought by Heritage Charlevoix in 1992 (see The Gift of Bread ). Restoration work started in 1997. The mill started producing flour again in 2007.
A page from the booklet The Moulin de la Rémy
See A Quebec Story…

Meunier, tu dors, ton moulin, ton moulin va trop vite !

Meunier, tu dors, ton moulin, ton moulin va trop fort !
(Miller, you are sleeping, your mill is spinning too fast!
Miller, you are sleeping, your mill is spinning too hard!)

This age-old French children’s song sounds a warning that today’s miller must heed like generations of millers before him or her. A mill that spins too fast increases the risk of an explosion because the silex stones can produce sparks that might set fire to the flour and dust particles present in the air and a mill that spins too hard might crush the grain and give the flour a stony taste. Patrick, the head miller at the mill on the Rémy, describes his work as organoleptic: he must constantly listen to the stones, touch the flour and smell the air to make sure the mill is spinning correctly. Any unusual vibration or creaking noise and he springs to action.

Fortunately for him, the mill doesn’t operate 24/7. It needs to produce about 60 kg of flour a day for the bakery and since it can mill 200 kg of flour an hour, it is easy to see that it actually remains idle most of the day. When I asked Jean-Claude Bernier, the man in charge of the whole mill/bakery operation from the restoration work to day-to-day business decisions, why the mill wasn’t working at full capacity, he told me that the millers only process locally grown wheat, which means they are dependent on the harvest. The goal is to have enough reserves to meet the needs of the bakery for one full year. When it is met (and it should be very soon), measures will be taken to start selling the flour on a larger scale. Right now flour, germ and bran can only be bought retail through the bakery.

No school exists for millers who want to mill grain with stones the old-fashioned way. Patrick who, in his other life, made a living “planting trees” (as he put it), had to learn on the job and from reading any book he could find on the subject. He has been at it for 4 years and he is hooked. So is Ernest, the other miller.

Ernest revealing the revolving sifter inside the bolter
Patrick showed me around the mill which he appears to know as intimately as the palm of his hand. He is very proud of the white-oak wheel. Larger than most wheels found elsewhere in Quebec, it measures 24 feet (7.3 m) in diameter and is 4 feet (1.22 m) wide and is mounted on ball bearings. An exact replica of the original wheel, it was built to specifications in Bernier’s workshop.
The mill has three pairs of grindstones, each one dedicated to a specific grain. Right now it only produces wheat flour but buckwheat is next in line and will be milled with its own pair of stones. Of each pair, only the top one turns: it is called the runner. The bottom one is stationary and is called the bedstone. The stones come from La Ferté-sous-Jouarre in an area of France where the flint is just of the right quality. Were it harder, the stones would get smooth fast and the grain would roll around instead of being ground. Were it softer, they would wear out and crumble and stone particles would be mixed with the flour. Quebec flint is not porous enough, so that it heats up quickly and isn’t suitable for milling.

I won’t even try to describe the axles, gears, wheels, pulleys and belts which activate the various mechanisms. Despite Patrick’s excellent and detailed explanations, I cannot say I remember all of it, so I would probably make tons of mistakes. Also, if you are like me, you may be mostly interested in the final product, the flour! But in case you really want to know, a very good description of watermills is to be found in Wikipedia.


The Rémy River

In the old days, the grain was stored in the attic from where gravity drove it into a large funnel above the millstones. Today it still comes to the millstones from the attic through the funnel but it is stored in a modern granary at the back of the mill. Once ground, the flour goes to the bolter inside which a sifter separates the various grades: white flour, germ and bran. Like the wheel, the bolter is an exact replica of the original one which had deteriorated beyond recovery.
The whole-wheat flour doesn’t go into the bolter since it doesn’t need to be sifted.
I was given some flour from the mill, both white and whole-wheat, to test at home. The all-purpose flour was fine but I was particularly impressed by the whole-wheat flour which I found surprisingly light and mild-tasting. Both flours seemed to absorb water less readily than their US commercial counterparts I am used to working with. I had thought the opposite would be true since they were milled from local wheat and due to the harsher climate, Canadian wheat is normally richer in protein than US wheat. Usually protein-rich flours absorb more water. It may just have been that batch of wheat. In any case, it confirmed for me what bakers always say: when making bread, go easy with the water until you know your flour!

For all practical info regarding the mill and/or the bakery, please refer to the Moulin de la Rémy’s website.

Boulangerie La Rémy (La Rémy Bakery)

Born from one man’s resolve to bring back the taste of bread to Charlevoix County, Quebec (see

The Gift of Bread

), la Boulangerie La Rémy (La Rémy Bakery), located in Baie-Saint-Paul, is a modern establishment which operates the old-fashioned way. Bread is baked in two brick and clay wood-fire ovens modeled after 18th-century French ones. Except for the baguette and the brioche, it is made with local wheat stone-ground at the nearby mill. Everything is hand-shaped.

Wheat field in La Malbaie

The bakery is in the hands of two master bakers from France who work alternate shifts (in season, the bakery is open 7 days a week). I met Hubert, from Brittany. Hugo, the other baker, had the day off. Like almost all the bakers I have ever met, I found Hubert passionate about his craft. He is also delighted to be practicing it in Quebec.
The bakery mixes every day two levain-based doughs and two yeast-based doughs. Out of these four doughs, it makes eight breads with some variation from day to day. Whatever doesn’t sell on a given day is frozen then sold at a 20% discount on those days when fresh bread sells out. Looking at the list of ingredients for each bread, I noted that many of the yeasted breads included some percentage of levain as well.
Scoring the raisin bread

I would have loved to taste everything but even though I had purposely skipped breakfast, I just couldn’t. I tasted the meteorite, the bakery’s signature bread and one of its best-sellers.

See

The Meteorite

I also tasted the hazelnut-cranberry bread, delicious with just the right combination of sweet tartness and fragrant nuttiness.

I was seriously taken by the “pain au fromage” (cheese bread).

Chock-full packed with the locally produced Hercule cheese, it struck me as the perfect picnic bread. A loaf of this bread, a jug of wine and thou under a gentle sky… That’s how I would spell h-e-a-v-e-n! Although of course it might taste just as good eaten at home with a green salad or with soup (in a restaurant, it’d be lovely to have it served alongside French onion soup instead of the limp croutons topped with heavy melted cheese which usually ruin this otherwise delicious dish).

There were many other tempting breads either already baked or awaiting their turn at the oven, including the “batard de Charlevoix” or the “miche La Rémy”, both made with pure levain…

…the olive bread…

…the walnut bread (with wheat, spelt and rye)…

…the raisin bread…


…and of course, Quebec’s own traditional bread, the popular “pain à l’eau” or “pain de ménage” (made with white flour, lard and sugar):

I haven’t tasted this local staple but it must be good since Anne Perkins Cabot, who with her husband Frank, was instrumental in bringing back the taste of bread to Charlevoix County, regularly bakes a big batch of it in the ancient local outdoor oven installed on her property. She even keeps two thuyas trimmed in the shape of loaves (the two little round bushes represent “la galette”, another Quebec specialty which the Cabots find particularly tasty).
I didn’t have time to do more than glance at the pastries or viennoiseries but in the course of my visit, I was offered a little brioche . It looked a bit sugary and since I don’t have much of a sweet tooth, I wasn’t expecting to really like it but it turned out to be so delicious I could have eaten a dozen.

Having grown up in Paris (and traveling there regularly), I have eaten my fair share of brioches overtime and I can safely say that this unconventional looking one was probably one of the best, if not the best I have ever had. Kudos to the bakers!

In short, I was quite taken by this bakery next to the mill on the Rémy. If I lived in Charlevoix County (where culinary delights other than bread seem to abound), I would certainly drop by regularly and stock up.
The pond by the mill and the bakery

For all practical info regarding the mill and/or the bakery, please refer to the Moulin de la Rémy’s website.

The Meteorite

About 350 millions years ago, a 1.2-mile wide meteorite weighing 15 billions tons and traveling at the speed of 6 miles per second impacted the area we now know as Charlevoix County in Central Quebec, completely altering its geography and disrupting climate patterns the world around.

While not quite as portentous, the reintroduction of good bread to Charlevoix County (see

The Gift of Bread

) at the beginning of the 21st century was seen as a major event, deserving to be heralded by a groundbreaking loaf. The bakers at

Boulangerie La Rémy

accordingly devised a daring recipe and, for maximum impact, decided to call their signature bread, the meteorite.

Boasting a 100% hydration rate and calling for a minimum of two folds and very high baking temperatures (500º F/260º C), the meteorite is made with all-purpose flour milled at Moulin de la Rémy and it is quite tasty, thanks to the addition of firm levain to the straight dough. Since the grain milled at the mill comes from La Malbaie, no bread can rightfully claim to be more local than this one and the customers love it.
The day I visited the bakery was damp and overcast. The meteorites had already been taken out of the oven (they go in first thing in the morning) and Hubert, the baker, wasn’t really happy with the way they had turned out. He would have liked to see the crumb a bit more open. I should have remembered this cautionary tale when I tried my luck at the meteorites myself. The day was stiflingly hot and humid and even though the air conditioner unit was humming steadily in our little camp by the river, there was no escaping the fact that conditions were not optimal for baking. Never one to be deterred, I forged ahead.
Well, one thing is for sure. The breads did look like foreign objects from outer space (or the way I imagine a meteorite looks before entering the atmosphere) when they were done proofing.
And when they were done baking, well, they didn’t look much like the meteorites from the bakery. I am not sure what they looked like with their ruddy cheeks, maybe prehistoric renditions of planets in the solar system?

The two little loaves actually came out okay. The aesthetic appeal of the larger one was certainly more difficult to grasp. Let’s put it this way: it did look a bit like a meteorite after all, but a meteorite after impact, especially with its blackened bumps all over. The fact is that, probably egged on by the fierce heat outside, my little camp oven (usually very timid and barely hot enough to bake bread) gave it its all. The big loaf went in after the little ones came out and even though I had lowered the temperature, it still got scorched a bit (it actually looks worse in the picture than it did in reality).

The funny part is that even though the breads baked for about 40-45 minutes and their internal temperature exceeded 210ºF/99º C (which is pretty high for a – mostly – yeasted bread), the crumb was a bit gummy. I should have turned off the oven and left the loaves to dry out inside with the door ajar.
As it turned out however, the gumminess was no big deal. We had a cookout with friends and what I did is open up the meteorite horizontally and set it to toast lightly on the barbecue. It took up a delicious smoky flavor from the Italian sausages which were grilling underneath and we enjoyed it very much. Our friends took home what was left of it.
I had fun making it but it took a huge leap of faith to believe that what was basically at the beginning a very soupy dough would actually turn into bread! The folds are what did it of course and I greatly enjoyed feeling the dough strengthen after each one. So if you like baking on the edge, go for it! You’ll have a ball!
Ingredients (for one big loaf and two little ones)
1 kg unbleached all-purpose flour (I used flour stone-ground at

The Mill on the Rémy

)

1 liter of water
21 g salt (Baker Hubert uses 26g)
120 g firm starter (mine is 40% whole-grain)
6 g instant yeast (Hubert uses 12 g fresh yeast)
Method (my interpretation of what Hubert does at the bakery)
  1. Place flour, yeast and water in the bowl of the mixer
  2. Mix well and let rest for 20 minutes (autolyse)
  3. Add the levain (cut up in small pieces). Mix until incorporated
  4. Add the salt and let rest for 15 minutes
  5. Mix briefly
  6. If necessary mix again briefly after another 15-minute resting period. Repeat if necessary.
  7. Transfer to an oiled container and cover
  8. Proof at 75º F/24ºC for one hour
  9. Give the dough one fold (north-south), wait a few minutes and give it another (east-west).
  10. Repeat the folds as necessary until the dough feels strong enough (I did four but Hubert gets away with two)
  11. Let the dough rest 15 minutes and divide as desired with no pre-shaping
  12. Let proof upside down on a floured couche for a maximum of 30 minutes
  13. Turn the loaves before sliding them into a very hot oven (500 ºF/260ºC), directly on a preheated baking stone (at the bakery, the ovens are so tightly built that no steam is necessary. The breads generate their own steam. I did steam mine, which might be the reason the crumb turned out wetter than it should)
  14. Bake for 45 minutes.
The Meteorite is expected to re-enter the atmosphere on Susan’s Wild Yeast blog just in time for this week’s Yeastpotting.
For all practical info regarding the mill and/or the bakery, please refer to the Moulin de la Rémy’s website.