One More Croissant for the Road

by Felicity Cloake

  After ordering a coffee for the road, I ask if I can go and have a look in the kitchen. Of course, Madame says, no problem. Christophe is gently tending one of four hot plates, sweeping the batter across the smoking surface in elegant half-moons as calmly as if he was buttering toast. ‘You can have a go if you want,’ he says, ‘once I’ve finished these orders.’ I smile nervously and hope he’s joking.

  In the meantime, we chat about how he, a Normand no less, ended up as the meilleur crêpier de Bretagne – a turn of events he still seems faintly baffled by. Having worked in Switzerland as a baker for 18 years (and winning several awards for it, I discover later), and with a young daughter, ‘I wanted a change. We were actually looking for a boulangerie in another part of Brittany … and we ended up with this.’ He shrugs; La Frégate found him, it seems.

  You must have made pancakes before, though, to have taken on a crêperie. ‘Oh, occasionally,’ he says modestly, ‘but it’s all just luck, really. Good cooking is always about the ingredients you use, that’s the difference. The buckwheat batter is just flour and eggs – I don’t put milk in the savoury ones, though some people do … Actually,’ he neatly folds something startling involving chicken and pineapple, ‘maybe there is a secret. Well, not a secret, but watch, I cook them on both sides. Not everyone does. Lots of people just do the bottom, then add the toppings. Cook them on both sides, with plenty of butter like this, that’s how you do it.’

  The thing is, Christophe muses, cleaning the hot plates, it’s great to be so popular – ‘we turn away 200 people a summer, people have come from Australia, from Réunion, it’s madness. We’re full every night!’ – but the problem is that not everyone (‘Especially you English – it’s always time, time, time! with you’) understands that real crêpes have to be made to order, and good ingredients need cooking with care. ‘It’s not like a restaurant where you can prepare the starters and desserts in advance,’ he points out, ‘we only have the batter!’ Being so busy, he rarely gets to bed before 3 a.m., he says, though he admits he now allows himself the luxury of a day off a week, even in summer: ‘We’re getting old.’ (He’s 52.)

  Eventually, the orders stop coming in, and he persuades me behind the counter. Which do you want to make, buckwheat or wheat? Buckwheat, I say. Much nicer. He demonstrates the technique to me: using a little metal spreading tool to drag the mixture to the edge of the hotplate before it sets, first anti-clockwise and then, with a deft flick (it’s all in the wrist apparently), the other way – ‘and not too hard or you’ll rip them!’ I’m so anxious by this point I can’t find the words in French to explain to him how hopeless I am at following physical instructions, so instead I demonstrate it with a ragged shroud of a pancake. ‘Not bad,’ he says kindly, scraping it off for me, ‘but you can do better.’

  For the next attempt, I have an audience: a fellow crêpier from Dinan on a busman’s holiday, who sweetly offers me the chance to come and do some work experience with him, too, if I have time. His wife merely giggles behind her hand, and frankly, I don’t blame her.

  Eventually I manage one that’s almost intact. Christophe kindly folds all my burnt offerings up in clingfilm for me to take away (possibly he’s too ashamed to put them in his own compost) and pops in an old jam jar of his award-winning salted caramel sauce, sticky with promise. I pose for photos with Sylvie, his delightful wife, who is so petite that I feel like an Anglo-Saxon ogre beside her (there’s nowhere to hide in Lycra) – and then ask them the best way to the station.

  ‘It will only take you 20 minutes, max,’ the waiter says confidently.

  Christophe shakes his head. ‘I’d leave an hour if I were you. He’s young … I mean, you’re young too …’

  ‘Non, mais elle est sportif!’ Sylvie says encouragingly. Still, I think, best be off, just in case.

  Crêpes Complètes (buckwheat pancakes with ham, cheese and egg)

  Known as galettes elsewhere in France, these emphatically savoury pancakes get their earthy, slightly bitter flavour from the buckwheat (sarrasin or blé noir), which sustained generations of Breton peasants, for whom imported wheat flour would have been an unthinkable luxury. Because of its lack of gluten, buckwheat is harder to work with than ordinary flour, but it’s well worth persevering, as the finished pancakes have a lovely crisp texture and a far more interesting flavour that, to my mind at least, pairs particularly well with cheese.

  Makes about 20 galettes

  500g buckwheat flour

  2 tsp coarse salt

  1 egg, beaten

  Per galette

  1 tbsp butter, plus extra to serve

  1 egg

  50g grated cheese (I like Gruyère)

  1 slice of ham, torn

  Mix the flour and salt together in a large bowl, then gradually whisk in 1 litre of water until bubbly and the consistency of single cream. Beat in the egg, and ideally leave to rest, if possible, for a couple of hours – but it’s no disaster if you don’t, it just gives a better final consistency.

  Grease a flattish, heavy-based frying pan (you want to mimic the professional billig hotplates as closely as possible) with half the butter and put over a high heat. Pour some of the batter into a jug.

  When the pan starts to smoke, pour in just enough batter to cover the base, quickly swirling to coat it evenly but as thinly as possible, using a palette knife to help spread it if you find that helpful (if it’s too thick to swirl, add more water), and cook until it begins to come away from the base. Loosen and turn it, adding the rest of the butter underneath.

  Once cooked, break the egg in the centre and spread out the egg white. Sprinkle the grated cheese around the white and top with the ham. Fold each side of the galette into the centre, so only the yolk is exposed, and cook for another 3 minutes.

  I can’t resist popping my head round the door of the church on my way out of town and then, on reading that there’s a statue of St Anthony and his pig, seeking it out to pay homage – in the process I manage to leave the bag with my passport and money on his altar rail, remembering it only as I cycle out of town. Fortunately, it’s still sitting there in front of the pig’s beneficent gaze when I rush back in – which, given how tight my schedule is, does feel a bit like divine intervention.

  Huffing my way up a couple of hilariously steep hills between Le Faou and Pont-de-Buis, where the nearest station is located, I’m relieved not to have lost too much time to my own foolishness. In fact, I’m there early enough (so sportif!) to make a detour up yet another hill to a supermarket, where I shelter from the rain, which has returned with vigour, and buy an emergency packet of peanuts before heading back to await the service to Quimper.

  The station is a one-platform affair, with a timetable at the entrance, but nothing in the way of announcements or other signs to help the visitor. Trains in both directions just appear without warning, which is how I find myself inadvertently heading not south to Quimper, Nantes and the Loire Valley to meet my friends, but back to Brest, the city I cycled out of six hours before, and very much the end of the line. Not that I realise for the first 20 minutes of the journey as I change out of my wet Lycra in the loo and relax into the dry warmth: in fact, the ticket collector who gently points out my mistake has to then sit down himself, so serious is my error. He sucks his pencil, removes several timetables from his breast pocket and makes many little calculations on my ticket, sighing heavily. Eventually, he looks up sorrowfully and says, ‘Mademoiselle,’ (as if I could love him any more), ‘I’m afraid there is no way for you to get to Nantes tonight.’ He explains the furthest I’ll be able to get is Redon, if I get off at the next stop, and that he’s written on my ticket to explain the situation. He takes out a weighty silver stamp to authenticate this and leaves me to my misery.

  My next problem, apart from the fact that nothing at Landerneau – my connecting station, where I am condemned to spend two tedious hours – is open, is the paucity of acco
mmodation in Redon. The name also sounds oddly familiar. A nasty suspicion begins to take shape at the back of my brain. I flick through my photos from last year’s cycling trip and realise Redon is indeed the place where we finally got fed up of the relentless damp, and after being lightly pelted with stones by gypsy children, camping in an industrial estate where a strange man haunted the ladies loos and being turned away from a potato-themed restaurant in the pouring rain, decided to skip Brittany altogether. This memory does not fill me with hope, so I pick the closest free room to the station to enable a quick exit tomorrow morning.

  When I arrive, the two-star Hotel Asther is locked up and deserted. Nothing Redon throws at me can surprise me, so I’m almost disappointed when the lady who answers the phone says she’ll be down in a jiffy … and actually is. The hotel itself is worn, but comfortable, all rickety stairs and wheezy beds – more characterful, I think, than a modern chain, as long as I don’t end up with bedbugs. Then a thought strikes me. I run back downstairs – is there anywhere open for dinner? Not even a supermarket? There is not, Madame says regretfully.

  Back in my creaky palace, I unwrap the damp excuses for crêpes that Christophe packed for me, and smear them with salted caramel sauce and some of the emergency peanuts. They’re not the best crêpes in the world, but right now, in Redon, they’ll do.

  Km: 53.5

  Croissants: 0 (potato pancakes with Marmite: 2)

  High: Eventually producing a half-decent crêpe

  Low: Nearly making a ticket inspector cry with pity

  *By me, obviously.

  STAGE 6

  A Stage in Two Parts: Redon to Tours, Paris to Lamotte-Beuvron

  Tarte Tatin

  The tarte Tatin, perhaps the most famous apple pie in the world, is at its most basic, a simple upside-down apple cake made with pastry instead of batter. What sets it apart from its many rivals, however, is that the fruit is slow-cooked with copious amounts of butter and sugar until it becomes deliciously caramelised. Trust the French to come up with that particular stroke of genius.

  PART ONE: Redon to Tours

  Having already been caught out once too often by the idiosyncratic opening hours of the French boulangerie, and not wanting to rely on Redon for anything but bitter disappointment, I’ve signed on for breakfast at the Hotel Asther, served in a windowless room behind reception, where two workmen sit on the same side of a scuffed banquette, gloomily watching a TV on the wall showing a rolling montage of cars floating in flooded streets across France. We greet each other politely (a lovely French custom that’s hard to adjust to after 15 years strenuously avoiding eye contact with London’s other eight million residents) and I grab a kiwi and an orange from the buffet (vitamins!) and find a spot in the opposite corner.

  Madame, who has single-handedly redeemed Redon in my eyes, brings over a basket containing half a baguette, a plump golden croissant and four little pats of Paysan Breton beurre demi-sel, which does actually appear to be 50 per cent salt, 50 per cent delicious dairy fat – I end up eating everything, just so I have an excuse to finish the butter. The men watch me curiously as I take a picture of the croissant (whose slightly bland flavour is offset by an excellent crisp texture and layers like a seashell – 7/10), but I don’t try to explain; being British is surely a get-out-of-jail-free card, given everyone now thinks we’re mad anyway.

  As I’m a day’s ride – or a morning’s train-ride – north-west of where I’m supposed to be this morning, and have friends arriving in the Loire Valley for lunch, I don’t really have time to feel sad about leaving Brittany until the lush, rain-soaked countryside rolls past the train window, and I wish I’d seen more of it. Regret is tempered with relief: my biggest worry for the last few months – travelling on my own – looks as if it might turn out to be no more than a classic monster under the bed, and I’m pleased to have slain it.

  I have about an hour to kill in Nantes between trains, which is just enough time for a quick, roadwork-dodging tour of the centre, but sadly not quite sufficient for a ride on the giant shiny steel slide that tumbles from the top of the castle walls into the moat below. I’m dying for a go, but instead content myself with a nose round the cathedral, which boasts a clam-shell stoup of holy water of such magnificent proportions it properly belongs in the Cancale shell museum, and a magnificent carved marble tomb described by Henry James as ‘one of the most brilliant works of the French Renaissance’. It is indeed striking; a rather elegant hound lies bravely alongside a lion at the shrouded feet of the deceased: François II, the last Duke of Brittany, and his second wife, Marguerite de Foix, who wear suspiciously beatific expressions, as if at any minute they might leap up and shout GOTCHA!

  Rather oddly, François’s first wife, also called Marguerite – a 12-year-old who also happens to have been his first cousin – is buried in the same grave, but as the whole monument was commissioned by the second one’s daughter, Anne of Brittany (later Queen of France), she doesn’t get so much as a namecheck, let alone a flattering effigy or a dog to accompany her to eternity.

  On the way out, I stop to read a printed notice in several languages telling visitors they are ‘entering the House of GOD!’ and requesting ‘respectful silence and proper dress’ before inviting ‘Brother Believers’ to attend prayers in the Chapel of the Holy Sacrament ‘(near the Tomb of François II)’. Some fair-minded visitor has added to this last, in pencil, ‘and Marguerite of Foix’ in every language: a small victory for feminism which puts a spring in my step as I return to my bike, even if, I note, poor old Wife One has been forgotten yet again.

  My second train of the day runs along the length of the Loire Valley, and I find myself back on the tourist trail for the first time since Mont-Saint-Michel, sharing a bike carriage with an elderly couple who seem to have strapped their entire lives and a squashed baguette to their back wheels. They’re a type I’ll see again and again on the roads: retired couples with skin as tanned and creased as mountaineers, placidly covering vast distances in no particular hurry. I’d envy them if it didn’t look like such hard work.

  They’re going to Tours. I get off at Saumur, where I’m meeting my weekend companions, Tess and her husband Tor. I have a good feeling about this place from the moment I spot a baguette vending machine outside the station. Crossing the Loire for the first time, I stop to take a picture; this is the longest river in France, running over 1,000km from the high, stony gorges of the Massif Centrale via this pretty valley full of fairy-tale chateaux and limpid wines to placidly discharge into the Bay of Biscay. Sadly, we’ll only be cycling a tiny part of its course.

  With the others en route from the airport, and our hotel reception closed for lunch, I take refuge in the Tourist Information Centre to try to secure a back-up plan should my companions find, belatedly, that cycling is not their idea of mini-break fun. Neither of them so much as own a bike back in the UK, so their willingness to even give it a go demonstrates the kind of loyalty old François II’s first wife could only dream of.

  I ask the lady behind the desk if the train is the only transport option between Saumur and Tours, given that tomorrow is a strike day and, according to the SNCF website, not much seems likely to be running on this particular line. She confirms the worst: they’re going to have to cycle the whole lot with me tomorrow.

  Just then I get a text from Tess: ‘We’re in the first bar we saw! What do you want to drink?’ Perfect, I think, nothing like booze to bury bad news. I find them round the corner with a beer and a glass of wine. Two rounds later, I gently suggest we should perhaps think about lunch, as it’s nearly two o’clock. A couple of restaurants nearby claim to serve until 2.30 p.m., though of course in reality they all but laugh in our faces. ‘Non, Madame!’ the waiter chortles, stacking chairs. ‘Too late!’ while in the second, the maitre d’ scowlingly shakes his head as soon as I cross the threshold. The crêperie we end up in is definitely not one that would meet the strict definition of Crê
perie Gourmande on Christophe’s menu, but it’s in a sweet little square, they serve Loire wine by the carafe and the waitress is so grumpy at having to work past the designated lunch hour that it becomes almost funny … though not quite as funny as the burger Tor orders that arrives unexpectedly swaddled in a soggy crêpe instead of a bun. ‘It’s all right, I guess,’ he says bravely. ‘Bit of a weird texture.’

  Unable to face the rest now I’ve tasted the best, I bypass the pancakes in favour of a salad in the traditional French style, the few leaves hidden beneath curls of cured ham and chunky toasts topped with rounds of creamy local Sainte-Maure goat’s cheese. Tess’s comes with another Loire speciality: rillons, or pork belly, slowly cooked in its own lard until it melts into a deliciously fatty pâté. ‘I love France,’ she says happily, demolishing the lot.

  We share another carafe of thin wine for dessert, and halfway down it, I hear my name shouted from somewhere behind me. It’s startling in a country where I know no one but these two for about 400 miles, and I turn around to see a blonde woman flying across the square in my direction. ‘I thought it was you!’ she squeals delightedly. Fortunately, the Muscadet is innocuous enough that I immediately recognise Martine, an art director who I last saw at a photoshoot six weeks ago attempting to make Bermondsey look like Brittany for a French recipe feature I’d written for her magazine: ‘And now we’re here in the real thing!’ she squeals – and in true Brits Abroad fashion, we’re both a bit tiddly at four in the afternoon. I feel a warm flush of national pride, though to be honest, it could just be the wine.