From the memory of villagers, there had never been a communal oven or a bakery in Combaillaux (Hérault), a tiny snail-shaped town clinging to its rocky peak. To pick up the last batch, we waited for the itinerant trader or we got our supplies from the supermarkets and bakeries in the area. As for soft wheat, the one used for bread-making, it was not really the king on these Languedoc lands, more conducive to the cultivation of vines and olive trees.
So imagine that one day we would make 100% local bread there, no one would have risked it. Nobody except the mayor, Daniel Floutard (citizen list), and a handful of enthusiasts who have made it possible for a year to bring “painbaillaux”, a loaf made from wholemeal flour, from wheat sown in the town, out of the oven. Without exaggerating, we can speak here of real “village bread”.
And “a short kilometer as the crow flies” only separates indeed, according to the mayor, the agricultural parcels of the counter of the Fournil de Jean, the only bakery of the village, opened for four years, where the pavement is shaped and sold. Difficult to find a shorter circuit than in this rural town (1,800 inhabitants in 2022 against a few hundred at the beginning of the 20th century).e century), located about twenty kilometers north of the Montpellier conurbation.
From the heart of the historic village to the subdivisions below, where many newcomers have settled – families attracted by the living environment near the Hérault prefecture and its employment area – painbaillaux is a source of pride local. And with each delivery, it goes… like hotcakes.
Fermentation longue
At the head of the Fournil de Jean, the baker is called Christophe Adé. With his wife, Marjorie, he settled four years ago in the Place aux Jeunes, the epicenter of “new heart of the village” in construction. Although alone for the moment on its esplanade, the shop with its bright red frontage should, by the summer of 2023, be joined by other stores, but also by a health center and several public services, including the town hall. who will move here, because too cramped in the alleys of the old center.
Followers of long fermentation, additive-free flours and sourdough, the couple – Marjorie often puts her hand in the dough, too, when she is not for sale – “has always tried to do quality rather than quantity” in the various bakeries he has run in the region. But never Christophe, 47 years old whose “thirty bakery”, never thought of working one day from a “homemade flour”.
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