Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Spring 2008 - (Page 76) Our daily bread One of my favorite New Orleans breakfast recipes is for pain perdu. The “lost bread” is really a magnificent version of French toast that I grew up with as a child in New York, but somehow it takes on a new taste when made with thick crusty slices of egg-soaked French bread and is finished with a topping of powdered sugar. As I was beginning to write this column the words pain perdu floated back to me as I was thinking about bread and about loss. When I became a restaurant reviewer for New York’s Village Voice twelve years and fifty pounds ago, I decided that unless the bread was truly exceptional, one of the the coffee chop around the corner where I indulge in my love for chicory café au lait. Since Hurricane Katrina, they no longer have pain au chocolat, so I can shave off a few calories. For a while, La Spiga served my cravings well, but their much-lamented closing has limited my freshly baked possibilities. On special occasions, it may be a beignet or two at the Café du Monde or, if I can find my friends Poppy Tooker or Ken Smith and the moment is right, a piping hot cala, the rice fitter that is making a resurgence in both savory and sweet versions in culinary circles. Once a year, I am awakened by my friend, Kerry Moody, back with table service, I’ll be scarfing down the garlic bread there too. I’m still on bread patrol at dinnertime, waiting for crumbly cornbread at Upperline, or to Galatoire’s where the hot bread adds its own layer of crumbs to the table and keeps coming long enough to sate even my voracious appetite. The Sesquicentennial Edition of the Picayune Creole Cook Book devotes 24 pages to bread recipes including those for corn breads, yeast breads, waffles and more. It also begins to explain my bread hankerings in the Crescent City when its introduction states: Our Baker’s Bread, or Pain de CHERYL GERBER St. Joseph’s Day altar 76 LOUISIANA ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES\Spring 2008 ways that I would try to keep the poundage off was by avoiding it! In the days before the “bread revolution,” that was not too difficult. I’ve managed fairly well and up until now have had little trouble saying, “No bread please.” Then I became a resident of the Crescent City and all of that went straight to hell. The bread in New Orleans is simply mind boggling in its variety and in its taste. At times, it seems that the breads that appear on my table punctuate my Louisiana Days. Morning brings the first taste of the day with the buttery croissant that comes from bearing a warm gift of the yeast rolls that he bakes only on Thanksgiving using a recipe that he received from a friend’s mother. If a trickle of breads begins my day, it increases to a stream of variety as the day progresses. Lunchtime, if I’m feeling flush, it might be an indulgence at Lillete’s where the warm rolls just cry for butter, or the never-ending flow of bread at Café Adelaide or Commander’s Palace. Fewer shekels, I’ll head over to Central Grocery or the Napoleon House for a muffuletta or grab a catfish po’boy, and once Dooky Chase’s is Boulanger, of itself stands unique among the Breads of the United States. It has the peculiarity that one never tires of it as they do of other Breads, and the reason for this is that it is of exquisite lightness, white and tender, of an even porous character, with a thin crisp crust, and, best of all, is just a Bread as is required in our climate. It may be the pain de boulanger or the cala or even the croissants, but the history of New Orleans is certainly written in its breads: The French bringing the their yeasty delights; the Africans and their descendants brought their rice fritter and
For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.