A typical family run “boulangerie” when I was growing up in Mauritius in 1950’s
1950’s – At 6.30 in the morning sharp, the sun had barely broken the horizon, I would hear loud “Bang Bang!” on the door of our corner boutique. We were all still in bed, my brothers, my sisters, half conscious of what was going on. But there were no panic because the Bang was a routine occurrence, it was the delivery man from the “Boulangerie”, our local bakery. The delivery man arrived on bicycle, always punctual and in a hurry, with two big straw sacks full of bread, like huge beach bags, hanging on both sides of the handlebar. Our order was fixed at 100 loaves everyday, except on special days such as a public holiday, when we would request an extra 30 loaves. The delivery man would quickly transfer the bread into our own straw sacks, four at a time, two per hand, while making a count … quatre, huit, douze… under the prying eyes of my mother. We sold a loaf at five cents while our cost was four cents. If we were shorted by two loaves, and it would happen if we were not diligent, we would have to sell eight more loaves to cover the loss.
Bread was delivered from “La Boulangerie” to “La boutique” in two straw sacks hanging on both sides of the handlebar of the bicycle
The boulangerie, I had observed, only baked two types of bread. The “pain maison”, a rustic bread roll and the “moule”, a rectangular bread which in Hong Kong, I later found out, people call it “pillow” bread because it looked like a pillow used in Ancient China. Actually my brother-in-law’s father used one to sleep in the 1950’s. The recipe was unique, passed from generation to generation by earlier settlers to the Island. We did not carry the “moule” at our boutique for it priced itself out in our neighbourhood. We only sold the “pain maison” which was a bit larger than the roll normally found in supermarket today, and it had a distinctive straight deep wide scar across its dome, I imagine, to ease its breaking in two. The inside crumb was light, fluffy and chewy and the crust light, airy, crusty and crumbly, unlike some rock hard crusts that sometimes cut into your gum. The bread always arrived hot at our boutique and for an extra two cents we would slice open the bread and spread a thin layer of margarine or butter. For those who could afford it, the “pain maison” was best taken with a couple of “gateau piment” known as dhal fritters or chilli cakes made from yellow split peas, or sardines with “piment confit” pickled chillies, or “vegetable achard” which is similar to coleslaw but hot, spicy and stir fried in curry powder. The latter three condiments were fiery and they burned your tongues, numbed your lips and triggered a cascade of sweats down your foreheads and necks. Then, if we could gobble a bottle of ice cold coke, it would be paradise on earth. That was the way we liked to eat our bread.
This is the closest to “Pain Maison” as I knew it.
“Moule” bread. The Hong Kong people call such bread as “pillow bread” for its resemblance to a Chinese pillow used in the old days.
“Vegetable Achard” similar to coleslaw, but hot, spicy, fiery, stir fried in curry powder.
“Gateau Piment” a popular Mauritian delicacy till today, made of yellow split peas, garlic and green chillies and deep fried
Mauritius “Piment Confit”, green chillies marinated in vinegar, a must to eat with sardines
To slice the bread my mother used a huge Chinese cleaver, the only knife in our armoury, which she swung, on occasions, above her head to scare off the local bully. The same cleaver had once sliced a small corner off the tip of my left index finger, when at six-year old I attempted to chop a small cork for my water bottle. As blood was oozing out from my finger, I rushed into the bedroom and told my elder sister, without daring to make any noise. We were both too scared to tell mother lest being severely scolded. My sister wrapped my wound with a piece of white cloth which stopped the bleeding, and quietly I slipped out of the house and went to school. The visible scar had remained with me since. I learned a good lesson with knives.
The boulangerie was located ten minutes by foot from our boutique, the hours of operation unconventional. The work had to done throughout the night, which was tiresome and hard on the workers, because the bread had to be ready in the early morning so that it remained hot when reaching the inhabitants. If the bread was prepared too early it would sit on the shelf cold and if too late there would be no customer. The locals loved to have a hot bread before they departed for work in the wee hour of the morning.
We, curious “petit-camarade”, liked to hang around the boulangerie just to savour the aroma of the freshly baked bread. We further liked more to watch the workers at work. The building housing the bakery was primitive and unimposing, likely built before the turn of the previous century. From the outside the structure looked like any other stone house in the neighbourhood, with a small door and window, the roof corrugated metal sheets. Inside was a single room, rather dark except from the sun rays coming in from the door and a small window, a hundred square feet or two in size, with bales of flour stacked in one corner. The wall facing the main entrance was built with stone. It had a small opening with a small metal gate, and behind it hid the belly of the oven. Against the adjacent wall sat an elevated large wooden trough, bathtub size, similar to the water trough for horses which we saw a lot in John Wayne’s movies. Here, flour would be dumped in, water added with a sprinkle of salt. Sometimes a cockroach or two and sweats from the kneader’s face, might find their way into the dough, the kneader not able or interested to see or know, under the excuse of the dim light. It was no big deal. There were no Consumer Agency to file a complaint. The kneading was performed no differently from what my mother would do at home when making crackers at Chinese New Year, except that the picture was magnified hundred times, the workers working harder with both hands, bending over the trough for two hours or more at a time.
A kneader working hard over a bathtub size wooden trough filled with flour
When the dough reached a nice and smooth, spongy and bouncy consistency the cutter stepped in. He was the person responsible to cut the dough into different shapes, but in our local boulangerie only the “pain maison” and the “moule” were baked. The moule bread was easy to make, just throw in enough dough into a rectangular baking tray, then into the oven. The making of the loaf was more interesting. The dough was beaten, rolled and pulled into the shape of a long baguette on a large wooden table. With great skill and ease the cutter, using a small rectangular aluminum blade as a knife, folded at one end for ease of handling, pinched a handful of dough off the long baguette. With the fingers of both hands, he massaged the dough into small promontory before applying a final slash on the top. The kneader could do the routine with eyes closed, his movements were like a broken record that sang the same tune over and over again, yet soothing to our little eyes.
The dramatic part, for us little kids, was when the “Brigadier” started his routine. The brigadier was the person who mobilized the uncooked dough for their entry into the oven by way of a “giant spatula”, a ten foot wooden pole attached at one end to a square metal blade. Six of the dough would be aligned on the blade in two rows of three. With military precision and fluency, the brigadier would glide the pole inside the oven through the small opening on the wall, and positioned the dough inside the oven, side by side and row by row, as if they were soldiers ready for battle. The oven would be preheated with firewood several hours earlier. Looking through the small opening we could see sporadic shots of fire, and occasionally a gust of hot air coming from the oven would hit our sweaty face. Then without the assistance of a time clock, the brigadier would be recovering the now baked bread with the same spatula, again scooping the hot bread in two rows of three on the metal blade. The breads were deposited in a large wooden box from where they were swiftly transferred into straw sacks and counted, ready for the delivery men to take them away, without delay on bicycle, to the boutiques within their area of responsibility.
Bread is the oldest prepared food in the world, originated thousands of years ago. Today we go to the supermarket and pick up the bread we want from a variety of choices, in the city there are bakeries baking their own bread, pastry and cake. In 1950’s Mauritius, we only had the “Boulangerie” which exclusively baked bread and nothing else. Bread fed the neighbourhood, the city and the country. Boulangeries were small family operations, spread around the city, each serving a small area with a radius of only a mile or so long. The area could not be extended too wide because it would be impossible, with the lacking transportation system, to deliver the bread “hot” to the consumers. Staff absenteeism was also a threat to the operation of the boulangerie. Often, several days a week, the kneader, the cutter and the brigadier would one or the other, as a matter of habit, call sick, sick from drunkenness if not tiredness. The owner and other members of the family were always trained and prepared to step in.
How we eat our bread has its own culture. In Mauritius as small kids we used to remove the inside crumb from the loaf and ate only the crust. In Hong Kong, the people sliced off the skin on the four sides of the “pillow” bread and ate only the inside white crumb. Bread baked in oven fired by wood tasted absolutely different, absolutely sensational. The aroma of the freshly baked warm bread and the melting butter never failed to drive the locals to roll their eyes and draw long deep breath in full contentment as they dipped into the first bite. The local Creole people lovingly called the sensation “cram cram”, crunchy crunchy. It was bread made in Heaven, to never have its match.
A Chinese pillow used in the old days. Hong Kong people call the rectangular bread “pillow bread” for its similar shape.