Paris Bakery Tour

In the Montmartre area of Paris, March of 2018, we had lessons and a tour of the Le Grenier bakery and pastry shop. We signed up online through Viator. Olga was our superb tour guide!

It was a very cozy space with friendly bakers. We learned the bakers day began at 3 am and ended at 1 pm. The dough is made the day before and includes sourdough, yeast, flour, salt and water. There are over 3000 bakeries/boulangeries in Paris, but only 300 make their own bread and pastry from scratch on site! To check if your bakery makes their own, look for mixing machines in the back of the shop and workers baking!

A baguette should have many different sizes of holes inside and also a very crispy crust like you see here:

I will show you some of the steps involved. Most bakers keep their recipes a secret, so I do not have that to share.

Here is a video of the dough made the morning before. It is full of bubbles and is being poured into a square machine that cuts the dough into baguette size portions:

The next step is spreading this dough with flour and closing the lid. This cuts the dough into baguette size pieces:

Now the pieces of dough are placed in the Panimatic which rolls the dough into the long thin shape:

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The baguettes are placed by hand into rolled cradles of heavy cloth for resting:

The baguettes are placed on baking sheets which roll in and out of the ovens:

The baguettes are rolled into the ovens, baked and then rolled out to cool:

Baguettes are placed in the tall basket for customers to purchase at the counter:

Here are some quick pics of the pastry kitchen!

Using a scale to add ingredients for French custard:

Only the best pure butter is used:

Candied fruit is drying on racks waiting to be used to decorate the pastries:

Voila!

Nina in the Kitchen outside the Paris bakery